A Feast in Azkaban
by Nyx Fixx
Summary: How did Sirius Black Spend twelve years in Azkaban and come out relatively sane, when others in his situation went mad or died of despair in a matter of weeks? Complete, now in chapters, mature material, SBRL slash, but mostly gen
1. Chapter 1

**A Feast in Azkaban **

**Author's Notes:**

**Summary: **How did Sirius Black spend twelve years in Azkaban and come out relatively sane at the end, when many others in his situation went mad or died of despair in a matter of weeks?

_What is identity_? How is it formed, and how can it be defended? _A Feast in Azkaban_ examines those twelve years, and all the other years that may have had a bearing on the issue.

**Timeline: **1967 through 1993, non-sequentially

**Spoilers: **PS, CoS, PoA

**Rating: R**

**Warnings**: Murder, torture, suicide, rape, foul language, psychic assault, death. I'll be honest. There are some _very_ disturbing elements throughout this story. Beware.

On the other hand, many of these things do occur 'offstage', so to speak; though some do not. All are integral to the plot, and none are handled in a light or flippant manner. Though there are dark threads in this story, it is not, in my opinion, a _thematically_ dark story at all. But I'll leave the final determination on that to the readers.

**Feedback: **Always. Always to my very great pleasure and greater gratitude.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of these characters, events or plotlines. No profit is being made.

**Notes: **This is a _very_ large fic – it runs about 60 thousand words. There are 12 sections of varying lengths plus an epilogue. It _is_ complete, not a WIP.

**Dedication: **Nine months ago, I posted an innocent looking notice to the Yahoo SB/RL list asking for a beta for a 'dark' fic I was working on. Several kind souls responded, but one in particular took on the monstrous task of editing this fic (and contributing much to the continued sanity of its author) without fear and with constant patience, taste, discernment, nerves of steel and great good sense. And became an indispensable beta, one woman rooting section, and very good friend in the process. Thank you, Professor Cricket, goddess of the right word at the right time. Thank you for taking this long, long journey with me and for making it better, every step of the way.

A Feast in Azkaban

Nyx Fixx

June, 2005

_I._

The newest prisoner will not eat. This cannot be permitted.

He is a novel acquisition; so much we have already sensed. There is much to be learned, much to be savored somewhere in him; we all sense that as well. All is locked away behind a wall of featureless despondency; cold dejection, a tantalizingly stubborn unwillingness to live. He will not eat. He does not sleep. He rarely even moves about in his cell. His thoughts are uniformly black and uninteresting.

He is resisting. It is our nature to know whether a warm blooded creature's spirit is truly broken or not; it is our business as well. We cannot be deceived in this. There is a veritable glut of life left in him, this we know.

A feast of sorrow is left in him; this we suspect. We have begun to ache to taste this life; such obstinate resistance is seductive. He must eat; he will not be permitted to die just yet, not when there is still so much for each of us to learn; still securely hidden away from us all. We are patient, that is our way; there will be many more years ahead in which to pierce these guarded darknesses, every one of them. But not if the prisoner dies.

Three weeks have gone by since last he took some of the nourishment his kind must have. He _must_ eat. We have decided to persuade him. There are methods.

A new meal is prepared; several among us are already vying to claim the task of bringing this offering to the prisoner, of applying the proper compulsion. None among us has, so far, entered his cell. Tonight this will change.

Three of our number are chosen to serve the prisoner; others, many, gather round outside the cell to observe. We cannot see, we cannot watch; that is not our gift. We can only sense, we can only savor, we can only learn and taste and, ultimately, _know_. Many among us hope to taste a lesson tonight.

The keys are produced, their jangling in the cellblock corridor catches the attention of the prisoner in a way nothing else has before; we all hear the altered rhythm of his heartbeat, only momentarily. Then his breath catches, stops, resumes in a smooth, deliberately controlled cadence. The heartbeat slows until it has smoothed itself out into its original, untroubled rhythm. He has controlled it, set it back on its featureless track. It's brilliant.

Such will. Resistance in such artistic detail. It's _marvelous_.

_This_ prisoner _must_ eat. Tonight. Our chosen three enter the cell. The feast begins.


	2. Chapter II

_II._

Sirius is not on a hunger strike. There is nothing he hopes to obtain from his new captors; so his object is not the application of passive coercion; not for protest, not for gain. There is nothing he wants.

He doesn't touch the various wooden bowls of unidentified swill that appear in his space at intervals because he doesn't quite remember what they are or how they might relate to him. He is locked fast in an internal landscape of grief so deep he has lost touch with cause-and-effect trains of thought. He does not expect to end his existence by avoiding the food, rather, he does not quite remember what effects such avoidance can have, nor does he especially _want_ to end his existence. There is _nothing_ he wants.

There is nothing Sirius wants, but he is no more able to stop his natural inclination to resistance than he can consciously stop the long habit of breathing. It is too deeply ingrained in him, far below any glimmering of conscious thought. He simply senses that his inhuman keepers want him to eat, and so he will not. It's as impersonal a reaction as magnetism or gravity.

He has not been much aware of anything outside his own blank, black thoughts since he has been here, in his new home. His awareness is crushed flat under the weight of loss. All he sees are James' empty eyes, glasses askew, pupils unevenly dilated, the left only a pinprick, the right a perfectly round dot of black. All he hears is silence, a house destroyed, not even a single breath left anywhere in it, and a baby crying outside. All he smells is a crisp fall night, and the faint scent of a Halloween bonfire, drifting across deceptively peaceful darkened fields from acres away.

All he tastes is blood. All he feels is frost.

All he knows is comprehension.

That, at least, can _not_ be resisted. This grief is real; it has attached itself to every cell of him. Each detail of misplaced trust, of strategy gone amiss, of the final result, all this resonates in him with crystalline clarity. This is what has happened, this is how it happened, this is _why_ it happened. So far, he has felt no fear of the dreaded Azkaban guards to whom he has been given at all. So far, he has barely noticed them. Perhaps it is their influence that keeps him so totally enmeshed in recent memory, but perhaps not. This grief is unimaginable, and indeed, he cannot imagine ever being less crushed in it than he is now.

The clinking of keys outside his cell door penetrates his seamless inattention only because it is a break in the dullness of prison routine; a routine he has already learned, in a relatively short time. Dementors have never entered his cell in his time here before; it sounds as if they may be planning to do that now. It occurs to him to wonder why they would, momentarily, and just past that small blip of curiosity is more than enough self-awareness to for him to experience fear. His heart rate increases.

Then resistance, as integral a part of Sirius as his skin or his blood, kicks in. These foul things who are his caretakers do not have eyes, he has seen that much. But he suspects that their hearing may be very, very good. And he has already sensed the cold greed with which they gather around fear; even through his mostly remote awareness of things he has sensed that much. He has slowed his own heartbeat back to its normal pace before he has even thought about how to accomplish it. He just does it.

He will not provide them with fear. And he will not eat. This issue may be growing into a bone of contention, he supposes. They are, after all, coming inside his barred cell. Three of them.

One of the things carries a bowl in its noisome hands. Another brandishes a wooden spoon. The third glides toward him, only stopping a foot or so short of the corner where he is huddled. It cocks its hooded head; he hears a wet snuffling; it is sucking in the air in his space, tasting it.

_This is foolishness. We cannot permit it. You must take what we offer you now_.

Sirius bears down, hard, because there is more than fear in this. There is shock. He had never imagined that these things might speak to him. They do not use voices, per se. Their speech enters his mind through other means; he feels it like the faint, almost painless prick of fine needles. But it is, nevertheless, speech. He represses a shudder and looks up at the empty-handed member of the trio.

The thing appears to be pleased by his appraisal; there is a certain kind of cool satisfaction audible in its snuffling. Perhaps it is glad to have at least attracted his attention. He feels a sort of unpleasant shuffling about in his thoughts themselves, as though incorporeal hands were picking up thoughts and setting them down again, slightly out of place. It is an intrusive, ghastly sensation.

_Of course we can speak, in our way. But we are told that what passes for our voices seem … unpleasant to your kind. Would you rather we spoke no further this night?_

This is manipulation, Sirius understands. This is a threat, of sorts, but it is also an attempt to engage him in interaction. He does not reply, but something in him is glad of an opportunity for conflict. Something in him does respond to it and comes back, just a tiny touch, to life.

_You must eat. Only agree, and no further conversation need take place tonight. _

Conflict. A line drawn in the dirt. An ultimatum. Eat or we'll make you eat. Sirius' will hardens automatically; and although he does not realize it; he has not felt as connected to the real world as he does right now in months and months. He has been pressed too flat by grief and guilt. But now his captors are offering him a fight.

"Converse all you like," he says, rustily, to the dementor nearest him. His own voice sounds strange, virtually unrecognizable to him; it has been so long since he has spoken aloud. "Chat away. Do any of you happen to know the results of the last Quidditch World Cup, by any chance?"

The thing _sways_ with pleasure. Its two companions glide closer, eagerly, their implements of dining momentarily forgotten in their hands. Sirius can hear the crowd of them gathered outside the cell bars, rustling faintly, like dead leaves rattling in gutters. He feels again that sensation of psychic tampering in his head - thoughts, sensations, memories, everything - seized, examined, moved about. It is sickening, this ghostly violation, but he finds he can concentrate on the battle at hand and thereby tolerate it without screaming.

_You must eat. We can do more than speak to you. _

Cold, icy greed in that tone of not-voice. Sirius knows he would be terrified of it, were he not so intent on defiance. If he did not have a small internal supply of endless rage of his own to call on now.

"No doubt you can," he answers. "No doubt you can do all sorts of things. But it's clear to me that one thing _none_ of you can do is cook a decent bowl of stew, or whatever that swill you have in the dish is meant to be. I'd much prefer some Dover sole tonight, I think, and perhaps a light Chenin Blanc. Perhaps one of you would be so good as to get word to the warden?"

Sirius has fallen back on the arrogance of manner that five hundred years of selective breeding has instilled in him. It is another small, dark part of his identity, like his rage, that he has always despised in himself and has, hitherto, had little use for. Now it serves him well.

It apparently serves the dementors all around him as a feast. They all rattle and creak with pleasure, every one of them. He understands that he cannot expect to win any battle against enemies that fairly tremble with pleasure at every touch of his weapons, but the battle is an end in itself and he is not quite ready to abandon it.

The nearest of them leans down, brings its hooded head near Sirius' face. It reaches forward and its scaly, rotted hand passes over his head, just skimming his hair. It is a sort of tentative caress. Sirius convulsively swallows against a sudden onslaught of nausea and his face pales against the icy cold he feels coming off the thing's exposed flesh in waves.

_You must eat. Agree at once or suffer further persuasion._

_"_No," he says, through numbed lips. "I will not."

All that is in him that is more Padfoot than Sirius rouses, and he shows his enemies his teeth, even though he knows they cannot see. He feels the hair on the back of his neck stirring and understands that if he were currently wearing fur instead of skin, his hackles would be rising. There is a low, deadly growl trying to get started deep in his throat. His awareness of scents intensifies and he casts about, instinctively, for the scent of blood.

It is a pity that there is no blood in these enemies.

_You must eat. You must._

"No. I won't.

_Yes. Do it now. Your strength is failing. We much desire that you should live. _

"_I_ much desire that crossword puzzles should grow on trees. The answer is no."

The dementor caresses his cheek, cold fingers against bare skin. Sirius cannot tell if it does this to impel, or if it is a gesture of pleased affection. The former, he desperately hopes. The touch revolts him beyond all immediate will and he shudders under the thing's hand and jerks his head away. He does not want these things touching him at all; he especially does not want them touching him because they _like_ him.

_Ah, but perhaps we _do_ like you. Perhaps we will grow to like you a great deal, in time. Your name… it's … let us see …_

He feels a cold presence pawing, once more, through his head.

_Ah. Sirius. You must eat, Sirius. Please eat._

"No."

_We can pet you until you scream, you know. Some of us. All of us. Sirius. Please. Only agree._

"No. I won't.

_Your obstinacy is exquisite. It is a banquet to us. It is seductive. Why continue? You must eat. _

"No."

The thing bends itself in its robes and kneels on the stone floor beside him. It touches his shoulder, it runs its hideous fingers through his hair, it touches his mouth. It rummages through his mind and sorts through memories roughly, avidly. If it could whisper, it would be whispering in his ear.

_Such intransigence borders on insanity. Where does this madness come from in you? Why continue to refuse? You are sick with horror; each of us can feel it. Each of is _feeding_ on it. You must eat. Please agree._

Sirius is so revolted he can barely speak. But he manages anyway.

"No. I won't."

The dementors in his cell sway with avaricious pleasure. The one at his side sucks up the air nearest him hungrily, leaving him none, snuffling near his ear. The crowd of them outside almost coos; he hears his name repeated, again and again, in their needle-like un-voices. They are imploring, all of them. It is horrifying.

"No," he says, his voice cracking. "No. I will not."

He doesn't _know_ why he must continue to refuse. He's never known why.

It goes on in this way until Sirius loses whatever grip he has on consciousness and slides into a memory, one evoked by the nearness of his captors, and by their inquisitive greed. It is a memory like a dream, but it is more than memory, it is also life. _His_ life, complete, one moment out of time.


	3. Chapter III

_III._

"Now. You will repeat after me –"

"No. I won't."

Sirius' mother slaps his face, a light, sharp slap. It stings, but it is a blow purposefully calculated to inflict only pain, not damage. It is the fifth time so far that she has slapped him in this cool, controlled way.

"Attend. Repeat after me. 'I will never again so lower myself as to consort with –'"

"No. I won't say that. It's rubbish."

Another slap.

"' – as to consort with any children whose –'"

"I wasn't consorting. I was playing. A game with –"

Another slap.

"'- children whose breeding cannot equal my own' Say it."

"– a game with a ball, some sort of Muggle thing – "

Another slap. Considerably harder this time. She does not like to hear the word "Muggle" uttered in her house.

"Attend. Repeat what I've told you to repeat."

"No. I _won't_."

Slap. Sirius has cut his tongue on one of his teeth at some point, and a small, bright thread of scarlet leaks out of the corner of his mouth. His lips are pressed so hard together that they have gone white, and his face has gone white too. His eyes are boring into his mother's steadily, alight with anger, and every line of his small body communicates his defiance. He is at war. There is no fear in him at all.

"Football, I think they called it," he remarks conversationally, and shows his mother his teeth in a bloody, humorless smile. He looks like a fox kit at bay. He is seven years old.

Sirius' mother is secretly appalled by the nearly insane degree of willfulness her young son can already display. She does not raise her hand to slap him again. She is so torn between fury and fear at this stubborn streak in him that she knows she might really hurt him if she were to strike him again just now. He is, after all, very small, however willful. She is appalled, and she is afraid, because even at seven, he borders on being uncontrollable. What will he be like when he is seventeen?

She is also very proud of him, her willful, handsome little son, already elegant and well past the puppyish awkwardness so common to others of his age. His fearless defiance does credit to his blood; he will be an exceptional heir to his house. She does not wish to beat this high spirit out of him, she wishes only to control it.

But how is that to be done?

Sirius' mother draws a fine lawn handkerchief out of her own sleeve and dabs at the small line of blood at his mouth gently. There is not much gentleness in her, and less affection, but she has learned that often he responds better to gentle and affectionate touches than he does to the direst punishments. She does not approve of such weakness, but she remembers that he is still only a little boy, and that he will grow out of it, and that she loves him very much, in her way.

"Sirius, please try to understand," she says. She deliberately allows a pleading tone to enter her voice as she dabs the blood away and gently smoothes her child's baby-fine hair back into place. "You must promise me that you will never associate with those dreadful children in the next block ever again. They are not for you. They are not like you. Won't you promise your mother?"

She suddenly kisses his cheek, and feels a fleeting glimmer of remorse to see how his eyes widen in surprise at the touch. All the rigid fury in his small body melts away in an instant.

Young Sirius cannot be compelled by force or by anger. His mother could have slapped him until his face fell off, if she'd cared to. But he has little defense against love. She so rarely offers him such tangible affection. She strokes the cheek she had slapped only moments before, and instinctively her son nuzzles his face into the palm of her hand.

"Won't you promise your mummy, Sirius? Please?"

He trembles. She adds another motherly peck on his forehead to her argument. It is the coup de grace.

"All right," he answers, defeated. "I promise."


	4. Chapter IV

_IV._

The prisoner, Sirius, is becoming our favorite. Only rarely before in our tenure here in this domain have we taken consideration for the well-being of any of our charges. Never before have we _begged_ any prisoner to do our will. It is a new thing. And never before has a prisoner refused to obey, despite our compulsions, despite even our begging. This too is a new thing.

There is a shortage of new things here in on our island. We are fascinated by this prisoner. We _thrive_ on him.

And we have begun to suspect that he thrives on us as well. On opposing us all. He has started to eat once more; he now sleeps from time to time, we are now convinced that he will live.

This is much to be desired. He is becoming our most prized possession.

His dreams yield rich, sumptuous servings of the most opulent hurts, the most lavish anguish, the most splendid fears. The details are dark to us, as always, but the bright vividness of the passions - dainty dishes, all.

His waking hours yield the most seductive opposition, the most alluring aggression, the most enticing anger. The purest hatred. One feast after another. We cannot stay away.

Ah. Sirius. Our favorite.


	5. Chapter V

_V._

Sirius is gazing out of his small, barred window. He has been in Azkaban for two years. Now and then, a cool drought of night air makes it past the bars, and he is glad of the clean freedom in the taste of this air. Pale silver light shines through the bars too, and casts barred shadows on Sirius' face.

_What is it that you see, Sirius? Standing at your window?_

One of them is standing in the center of his cell, swaying slightly, in the same slow, unending manner that kelp does in the tide. The dementors have taken to visiting him regularly, chatting with him, in their way. He does not relish the idea, but he can no longer doubt that they have become fond of him. Also in their greedy, grasping, horrific way.

They ask him questions, they poke through the odds and ends in his head, they want to know everything about him. They are smitten. He can resist their will, but he cannot repel their interest or their monstrous affection. Sirius doesn't know if the one observing him now has ever come to call before. Even after two years, he still cannot tell one from another among them.

"What would you know about it?" he asks, dejected. It's no good answering their questions, he knows that. But he has no one else to talk to. "Sightless thing that you are. Why ask?"

_Why not? Perhaps you can explain it. Give us the benefit of your eyes._

He sighs. There is no explaining the sensual pleasure of beauty to his captors; their senses do not run that way, and their concepts of beauty, though definite, differ wildly from his own. He cannot explain to them that moonlight _is_ hauntingly beautiful, nor why it is particularly moving for him. He feels this moonlight on his face like a touch, like many familiar touches that he once knew.

He sighs again. So very far away, so long gone. All for nothing. Love wasted and destroyed.

"There's a full moon tonight," he remarks, inconsequently, to his hideous guest.

The thing snuffles and sighs with delight. It runs its mental fingers through specific thoughts, through particular memories. It swallows all the loneliness and futile desire and chastened regret in each of them.

_You are a creature to whom the senses are important. This sense of touch; this is especially important to you – it is an open wound in all your memories. Tell us about it, this touching. It is a continuous thread in your life. _

Sirius turns away from the window and its light. He finds that he cannot stand the frail caress of the moonlight on his skin another moment.

"Go away," he says hopelessly to the thing. He moves to the corner of his cell that is furthest from the window, the one that is filled with the deepest amount of shadow. After a moment, he sits down in it.

_But you are lonely. You wish for a missing companion. Talk a bit longer. Tell us about the moonlight. _

"You are hardly an adequate substitute," he says to it, truthfully. "I'm not _that_ lonely. Go away. Go pester someone else for a change."

_Ah, but you are our favorite, Sirius. A moment or two more. This touching; it is something we are much interested in. Your impressions are inconsistent. Sometimes it is a good thing, sometimes it is everything. And sometimes it is neither. How can the same thing be either beautiful or grotesque?_

Sirius registers that this is an interesting question in spite of himself. Captivity, it seems, has not dulled his mind anywhere near as much as he'd hoped it might, in time. He gives the question some thought, not quite completely unwilling.

"The difference. It's largely a matter of intent," he finally answers. The dementor comes close, eagerly; ready to suck up whatever memory will now be forthcoming.


	6. Chapter VI

_VI._

Bellatrix Black will be twenty in three weeks. In six weeks, she will be married. She will cease to be a Black and will become a Lestrange. The prospect fills her with an odd sort of bored pleasure. It is a good match; the offspring will be commendable, the purity of the pedigrees will be inarguable.

But she is also bored by the idea of the marriage she will soon make. Rodolphus Lestrange is ten years her senior, and thinks too much like she does. Their choices have been too much the same. She sees a lifetime ahead of tedious agreement and singleness of purpose between them.

She is spending a fortnight at the home of her aunt and uncle, along with the rest of her family; her parents, her sisters. This night, the night of Samhain, they have feasted her in honor of her upcoming wedding.

Bella sighs. Only a very few of the oldest pureblood families still celebrate Samhain. The Blacks, the Potters, the Malfoys; and even among some of them the actual revels are only shabby, debased things – the Potters' harvest-end celebrations, for instance, are more like Halloween parties than proper Samhain rites. Most in the wizarding world have long forgotten their roots. At least the Blacks still feast, but even that is only a pallid remembrance of the full meaning and mystery of this night. Just a few centuries ago, the solemn festival would have been properly honored with blood and fire and sex and sacrifice. It is a pity.

But Bella plans to perform a very small celebration of her own tonight; nothing approaching the sacred terror of proper Samhain rites, of course, just a little mischief. Her plans are really more of a practical joke than anything else, she must admit to herself.

But it's the best she can do, in this late age of palely civilized sensibilities and of full-blooded wizards shamefully weakened by Muggle moral soft-headedness. It is a creeping disease. Nevertheless, her sixteen year old cousin, Sirius, she assures herself, is bound to be infuriated enough to make up for the triviality, at least a little. He will be _so_ angry. At least some of her restless boredom will be assuaged.

She had not seen Sirius for several years; not since she'd finished her schooling at Hogwarts. Her memories of him from school, vague as they were, had been of a tiresomely exuberant, rather coltish thirteen year old Gryffindor, of all the bizarre things. So, in the course of this visit, she had been a bit surprised to find him, at sixteen, very close to being a man.

Now he is attractive; tall, elegant, an odd grace in him, quite unlikely in a teenage boy. He is almost pretty, although, in modesty, she shouldn't think it. Sirius looks so very much like she does now that looking at him is like gazing into a slightly distorted mirror. The family resemblance is extraordinarily striking. He could be her twin.

But these are not the things that interest Bella, or not primarily. During the first formal dinner here in Grimmauld Place, she had noticed that Sirius had taken his place at the table late. Certain significant glances between him and his father told Bella that her cousin's presence at this meal had probably been more compelled than voluntary. She had watched more closely thereafter, her interest sparked.

Young Sirius had been remote over dinner, controlled, carefully armored in an assumed, icy courtesy that had been very much at odds with her indistinct memories of a playful, boyish and remarkably open manner at school. There had been a certain edged irony in his polite congratulations to her on her upcoming marriage. All his contributions to the dinner conversation had been extremely guarded; just the barest minimum required for civilized dining. And then, when the family discussion had come round to the Samhain festivities planned for the end of the visit, and had moved from there to talk of Samhain in general; he had been unable to completely camouflage his utter distaste for the entire subject. And Bella had been able to guess at last what he'd been hiding beneath all those layers of remote disinterest and cool, polite talk. It had been rather extraordinary.

Sirius _hated_ them; hated them all. Bella had been able to see it in his face and hear it in his voice. The entire family. Not any one of them specifically so much; he barely knew her, for example. Just the _idea_ of them, perhaps. Just the thought of sharing the same ancient, carefully bred blood with the lot of them, perhaps.

It had been delicious, really. Fascinating and so amusingly futile. She'd wondered if he'd, perhaps, included _himself_ on his internal list of Blacks to despise. She'd rather suspected that he had.

Quiet inquiry and a bit of strategic flattery to one of the more gossipy house elves, a black-hearted little swine called Kreacher, had confirmed most of her suppositions. Sirius' parents were almost continually enraged with him, she'd learned, and the growing rift between them had been becoming more and more serious in his sixteenth year. A great deal of acrimonious back-and-forth had already taken place over whether he would be attending this current family celebration or not, in fact.

He associated with nothing but the lowest scum in school, or so Kreacher had said, mixed blood bastards and the sons of only the worst Wizarding families. He had severed himself from every one of his own family's events and concerns and associations; he never came home anymore for any of the old festivals; and had openly refused to observe any of the old rites, even though he had taken to observing many Muggle holidays. He regularly snubbed and pointedly avoided the sons of pureblooded families like his own, and had yet to show any interest whatsoever in any of the daughters. His prospects for making any sort of acceptable marriage for himself were dwindling fast; since his reputation was so bad and his attitude toward his familial obligations so derisive. His parents were beginning to suspect that he might simply be mad.

Perhaps he is, Bella thinks. Perhaps he is mad. Surely it is madness to have developed a horror of your own origins, of your own blood, she speculates. Sirius can hardly expect to scrub the very wellsprings of his own identity out of himself. Does he really intend to spend the rest of his life trying? It is deliciously absurd.

Tonight, Bella intends to give her cousin a few more memories to attempt to scrub away. A fine prank on him, a last bit of sensual vandalism before she is wed for her. It will be an excellent joke. She waits in the shadows of an upstairs corridor, outside her silly cousin's bedchamber door, for her impromptu confederate, the house elf, Kreacher.

A week ago, she'd tested Sirius. A few suggestive words, a few naughty hints. A few ribald, rather inappropriate compliments regarding his appealing looks. He had colored a bit at that, but only a bit. Bella had been able to tell that, young as he was, he was already beginning to be accustomed to such blandishments. Physical beauty, Bella knows from her own experience, has many advantages, but it also has its costs. Many people are unable, or unwilling, to see any further than a comely face. It can be like wearing a mask.

And the desires of others can sometimes become more burdensome than flattering. When Bella had managed to corner Sirius alone one night, in a dark alcove of the courtyard at the back of the house, she had dispensed with naughty hints and moved directly into straightforward sexual propositioning. She had made her terms graphic and unambiguous. She had left him no room to mistake her meaning at all.

"Thank you, but no," he'd said. There'd been a sort of cold, perhaps slightly revolted sarcasm in his polite refusal, but not as much blushing embarrassment as she'd hoped. Clearly, he must have had to refuse such plain invitations before. "I'm flattered, but you _are_ soon to be a bride. And, I have to tell you, I myself find the degree of kinship a touch unsettling. If you must have a first cousin, perhaps Regulus would be available. His tastes are less conventional than mine, I imagine."

Bella had laughed at him. His cold rejection had pleased her immensely.

"It is convention I observe, pretty cousin," she'd argued. "On Samhain night, our ancestors - yours and mine, Sirius, dear - would have been glad of the opportunity to concentrate their blood in this way. It is an old magic; a remembrance, if you will. Raise the dead with me, won't you? Subvert nature and bend the world to your will. That's what magic is for. Think of all the outrages we two could commit together."

"I expect you can probably commit outrages without my help, Bella. If you're not a Death Eater yet, you soon will be once you marry Lestrange. I'm not interested. Leave me alone."

"These are only minor differences of opinion. Just politics, cousin – when I speak of pleasure. Regulus won't do. He's too young. And he just might be too willing. It's you I want. Think how much alike we look, Sirius, you and I. Imagine – it would be like fucking _yourself_."

This time Sirius had laughed at Bella. "And I can manage _that_ without your help, cousin, dear. Along with every other teenage boy in the universe, and all the girls too, no doubt. You might give it a try yourself, if you're really in such need."

"Ah, now you're being nasty. It's _so_ cute. Dead sexy. I knew you could do it.

Sirius had sighed, more bored and dismissive than truly angry. "Please, Bella, can't we stop this? You don't want me; not really, it's just another way to harass the family mental case. I'm very familiar with the impulse, you know; even the house elves around here think I'm a shocking disappointment. You've got the wrong Black, cousin. Trust me."

Sirius at sixteen is tall for his age, and very strong. Though Bellatrix does not know it, his size, quickness, and innate flair for mayhem has made him the most feared Beater on the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch. He'd ended the conversation by using his superior physical strength to simply set Bella aside and walk away from her; he hadn't even bothered to handle her roughly.

Bella intends to handle _him_ roughly, in a manner of speaking, tonight. It is a festive occasion, and she intends to celebrate, one way or another. And she will not tolerate being dismissed.

Sirius' bedroom door is strongly warded against intrusion. He is still underage, and not legally permitted to use magic outside of school. But the Black home is so carefully secured, redundantly warded, and completely Unplottable, that Sirius could probably perform Unforgivables in it without being detected. Not that Bella thinks he knows any illegal curses. He seems rather a naïve, essentially good-hearted young fool to her. His ridiculous insistence on trying to find some sort of moral center for himself is what attracts her most about him. She intends to throw him well off course tonight.

Her temporary co-conspirator, Kreacher, comes oozing out of the shadows in the hallway. Bella had not even heard the ugly little house elf approach. She raises a finger to her lips to tell the creature not to speak as soon as she sees him. She does not know how to remove her cousin's spells from his door, but she expects that Kreacher does. And she has already determined, through questioning, that Sirius has never thought to order his family's servant _not_ to unlock his door to any individuals who might want to gain entrance. Kreacher is free to do exactly as she wishes.

And he is altogether willing, as well. His cordial dislike for the young heir of the house borders on outright hatred. He makes a few eccentric passes with his hands over the door, mumbles what may be an incantation, and Bella can hear a low crack. The door pops ajar an inch or so. Bella nods to Kreacher, and he nods back, an ugly little smile on his wizened face. Then he discreetly fades back into the shadows of the hall, and so away. Bella's way is clear. She waits a few moments, listening carefully, and then silently slips inside.

The room is dark, but all the curtains at the windows have been drawn back. There is a full moon tonight, and moonlight has flooded the darkened chamber. The head of her cousin's bed is directly under one of the windows, and she can see him clearly, sleeping peacefully in a patch of silvery light. The faint cracking sounds of Kreacher's magic have not awakened him. The moonlight is exceptionally kind to him; he is a handsome boy by any light, but by the light of the moon he is stunning; an intricate and delicate carving of ivory and onyx.

Bella smiles. If she cared anything at all for her cousin, she might be moved by this revealed beauty. But her heart remains untouched; she sees only the aesthetic pleasure in the scene, and is intent only on the damage she can do. She drifts, absolutely silently, to Sirius' side, and slowly, slowly, puts a hand to his sleeping head. Her fingers, white in the moonlight, barely touch the skin of his temple, and then begin to move in a slow, circular motion. She hums a charmed lullaby under her breath; a nasty little spell she knows to deepen his sleep so he won't awaken unexpectedly. Her joke will be ruined if he rouses from slumber too soon.

_"Hecate… succuba… sussurra…"_

When he is as fully enmeshed in enchanted sleep as Bella can make him, she runs the tips of her fingers over his mouth experimentally. He only stirs a bit at the touch, and his lips part by a small fraction under her caress. She decides it is safe enough to touch him now, and slips her robes off her shoulders, letting them fall, unheeded, to the floor at the side of the bed. She is naked beneath, and her skin is as pale and pearly in the moonlight as her cousin's is. They are, after all, very much alike. She eases into the bed beside him and draws the bedclothes slowly off of him, then carefully opens the loose silken robe he wears. She is pleased to learn that he is naked beneath. How convenient for her that he apparently has the habit of sleeping in such flimsy garments. How overconfident he has been in his door-wards, the naïve fool. She thinks of how they must look together, side by side in the moonlight, all long black hair and long white limbs, and again, a cold, purely aesthetic sense of pleasure touches her thoughts.

Sirius' consciousness and all his absurd ethical sensibilities are absent, temporarily imprisoned in artificially enhanced sleep. But his body, the body of a sixteen year old boy at the peak of health and strength, responds easily to Bella's subtle ministrations. She knows the right ways and the right places to touch. She takes the right liberties; this is not the first time she has worked this little spell. In time, he moans low in his throat for her – not that he knows it is she. When she decides to risk kissing him, simply because his mouth looks so deliciously kissable in the pale moonlight, he sighs a name, and it is not hers.

"_Moo-ny-yy_ …" he breathes softly, almost inaudibly. A faint, blissful smile further beautifies his features.

It is "Moony" that he dreams of when Bella touches him in this criminally intimate way. Who is this "Moony"?

Bella wonders about this, and files the whispered name away in her memory for further consideration later. For now, it is good to know that there _is_ someone, someone he wants, someone he has, perhaps, invested foolish dreams and sentimental notions in. She wonders if he has, by any chance, saved himself for this Moony – some mawkish fantasy of true love, perhaps? He is, after all, quite young. She mounts her defenseless cousin and when she is properly seated, moves her hips in practiced, knowledgeable patterns. The possible opportunity to destroy childish hope along with virginity tonight is exciting to her; her cruelty enhances her physical pleasure and she finds herself on the verge. But that won't do, not tonight. She slows herself.

Her joke is almost complete, and she must concentrate on the matter at hand just now. She hums the same enchanted lullaby she ensnared him with earlier, but now she hums it backward. It won't be long now, she knows, and when the right time comes, she wants him awake. The timing of her joke is very tricky, undoubtedly, but she is sure she can get it exactly right.

And she does. Her timing is hellishly accurate. Sirius' eyes open and full awareness floods back into them just as he enters the irreversible throes of orgasm. Bella can see him throwing off the clinging illusions of dream clearly; she can see it in his eyes. But he cannot throw off the natural processes of his body at will. He sees her. He recognizes her; she sees this recognition in his gaze at precisely the same time that she feels his warm seed flooding her. It is delicious. It is _perfect_.

She starts laughing at him even before his last pulses inside her are complete, and soon finds that she cannot stop. The expression of horror and shocked revulsion that twists his handsome face is priceless; her laughter becomes shrill, almost like screaming. Sex, blood, fire and sacrifice. It is a suitable Samhain joke, a bit tame, perhaps, but immensely satisfying. Bella could not be more delighted.

"Trick or Treat!" she shouts at him, just like the Muggles say on Halloween, their weak, bastardized version of her ancient, solemn festival. She is laughing so hard she can barely catch her breath.

She does not even feel it when he convulsively throws her off of him, does not even register the sharp thump when her bare buttocks make sudden contact with the hard floor beside the bed.

Sirius is horrified, shuddering; his eyes are the size of saucers as he stares at Bella, laughing naked on his bedroom floor. Clearly, he simply cannot believe that she has bested him in this most visceral of ways. He actually looks sick. A new outburst of screamy laughter explodes out of her throat.

"W-what - the fuck - is _wrong_ with you?" he manages to choke out at last; his voice shaking and guttural. "_Why_ would you _do_ something like this?"

Bella tries to stop laughing enough to talk. A little verbal to-and-fro will be fun too, at this point, she thinks. He is _so_ scandalized; he looks like the world's youngest and most blue-nosed village parson. It is hilarious.

"Why not?" she answers, still giggling. "It was fun. Your first time, I think?"

He expresses his helpless disgust in a sickened croak that answers her question eloquently. His body begins to convulse as the urge to vomit parodies the throes of orgasm. He forces himself to be still, forces his body now to obey his will.

"You evil, twisted _bitch_," he mutters quietly, already, much quicker than she would have guessed, beginning to accept that what's done is done and thinking beyond it. This is unacceptable, Bella decides. She doesn't want him to get his mental feet back under him quite so quickly.

"I am on my moon, darlingheart," she purrs at him. He stares at her uncomprehendingly, and she knows she's retrieved a little control over him. She presses forward.

"My _time_. Just think, cousin," she says. "I might be pregnant! Imagine that."

He's still pulling himself together much too quickly for Bella's comfort. That last jibe does cause a jerk of disgust in him, but he is already controlling himself. He is actually beginning to look at her more in speculation than in shock.

"Rodolphus will be thrilled," he says bitterly. "He'll never know the difference."

"Unless I tell him, Sirius, dear. The degree of kinship is, as you've said, a bit too close for convention. And yet, in view of the potential bloodlines, I think exceptions could be made. They'll never believe it wasn't consensual, you know. Being a boy has its disadvantages. Perhaps it is our parents who will be thrilled."

This remark does hit its mark, Bella can see. Sirius is not too distraught to understand how true what she says is. They are both the offspring of the same family, both prime potential contributors to the precious Black gene-pool. Their respective parents value them more for their genetic legacy than for any other quality they have. And they are both the eldest children of their houses. Exceptions could indeed be made; the opportunity to unite the two branches of the family would appeal to both sets of parents very much.

But Bella can also see that her accurate predictions and implied threats are not disrupting her cousin's thinking as much as she would like. He is obviously half out of his mind with fury and humiliation, just as she'd hoped he would be, but there is also a kind of cool calculation in the way he looks at her now, in the way he is visibly taking in her nakedness and vulnerable position on the floor. She suddenly remembers how physically strong he is, and how quick his reflexes are. She rapidly thinks of another comment to make, something that might upset him enough to shut down that detached look of speculation in his eyes long enough for her to get out of this room.

"Tell me, pretty cousin, who is 'Moony'? You mentioned that name, you know, when I kissed you. You whispered it. Someone you love? Perhaps you had hoped it might be this 'Moony' who would be your first? Instead of _me_, that is?"

All the blood drains instantly out of his face, Bella can see how completely he is blanching even by the pale light of the moon. For the first time, she sees real fear in his whitened features. She thinks to press her advantage.

"Who is 'Moony'?" she croons to him maliciously, once again. "Some delicate little Muggle-born chit who treasures her precious virginity? And you've been so _patient_ with her, haven't you, dear cousin? You've waited _so_ long."

Bella laughs once more. "Perhaps I'll mention that name to a few of my friends. _Who is 'Moony'_?"

It is a gross miscalculation on her part. Sirius is out of his bed and on his feet so quickly his form actually blurs a bit in her sight. She sees him snatch his wand up from his bedside table; where in her arrogance and her eagerness to complete her prank, she never even noticed it. She has a single fraction of a moment to realize that she herself is naked and unarmed, and then Sirius is on her, one strong hand clamping around her throat, the other pressing the hard tip of his wand into her midsection.

He raises her to her feet in one clean snap, and she is surprised her spine doesn't break in his grip. She gasps for air through her constricted throat and hears him muttering in a low, hoarse voice, intently, purposefully. It's an incantation, she realizes – he is casting a spell. She struggles wildly to get out of his grip, to twist away from the wand that is poking into her side. But she can't; he may look a lot like her, but he is much bigger than she is. Her struggles are useless. He twists her around so that her back is to him, and holds her in place with his arm, her throat almost crushed in the crook of his elbow. His wand hand still presses into her belly, and there is a terrible gathering harshness in the syllables of his incantation.

"… _lunare… detumescia …"_

It is a _curse_ he is casting; she is now sure of it. She twists in his arms even more madly, and gasps out a few words as best she can.

"Sirius – STOP! It was just a _joke_. Let _go_ of me!"

But he, apparently, isn't joking at all. The wand pressed to her belly tingles, then grows hot, and then suddenly grows icy; a freezing cold bolt of pain rockets through her guts a moment later. She screams; the pain, though quick and over almost as soon as it has begun, is agonizing.

Outside the bedroom door, the sound of people moving about in the hallway begins. Bella's screams have begun to rouse the family.

"What have you _done_ to me?" Bella spits at her cousin, unaware, in her anger and her fear, of the stirring of the house just beyond the bedroom door he is pushing her toward.

He hustles her out into the hall, she blinks in the brighter light in the corridor and barely registers the faces of various family members staring, astonished, at the ugly spectacle she and Sirius make. He is hauling her toward the stairway, she realizes, and although she tries to wedge her feet against the floor to stop him, she cannot.

It is not until he has her right at the top of the stairs that he takes the time to answer her last question. His voice is surprisingly even and cold in her ear.

"You're not pregnant now, Bella. Nor will you ever be. And the next time you want to come at _me_, you stupid cow – _bring a wand_."

Then Sirius throws her down the stairs.

He vaguely hopes she may have cracked her skull on the way down, but doesn't really much care. The question now is how he is going to get out of this hallway before his family manages to get past their initial shock at the scene and attacks him en masse. There is not the slightest doubt in his mind, just now, that they will. He is well past hearing the voice of reason, even in his own internal voice; he is virtually out of his head with rage and fear and self-loathing.

"Get_ BACK _…every one of you," he snarls malevolently at the lot of them, brandishing his wand in a trembling arc. He cannot keep his eyes on all of them at once.

He does not see the people he has lived with all his life, he does not see his own blood all around him. All he sees are mortal enemies, and that he is badly outnumbered. Padfoot is doing most of the thinking in this moment. No one he sees dares to move for a time, all are momentarily stilled by his vibrating, berserk aggression.

Bella moans from the bottom of the stairs, and the moment is broken. Bella's mother advances on him, her face twisted with fury. "You _foul_ –"

The words of a hex fill the air, and Bella's mother is flung to the ground, incoherent with rage and the power of the hex that has been cast on her. Sirius' mother lowers her wand and stands over her sister-in-law.

"If my boy were harming your _slut_ of daughter, they would have been running out of _her_ room, not his, and she would have been defending herself with everything at her disposal. Keep your slattern away from my son!"

She approaches Sirius evenly, as though she is not even mindful of his raised wand and trembling hostility. She reaches up, and strokes his cheek; for a second time that night, Sirius' body betrays him as he instinctively nuzzles his face into the palm of her hand.

"My little boy," she coos. "You have proven yourself worthy after all. You are indeed a Black. My boy, my little boy."

Sirius shudders at her words, and comes to his senses. He shoves his mother backward violently; she trips, laughing with pleasure, over the prone body of his aunt. He quickly raises his wand-hand again; no one else seems to know what to do, and now they are reluctant to approach Sirius lest they anger his mother as well.

He takes advantage of this temporary group paralysis to slip back inside the shelter of his room and quickly shoves his dresser across the door with a flick of the wand. He mutters haphazard warding spells that are highly unlikely to hold for long. Once this is done, he begins to shake so violently that he has to hold the wand with both hands to keep from dropping it. He is absolutely terrified.

Sirius has an undeniably wicked temper coupled with an indisputably loving nature. It is a bizarre combination, and very, very rarely, the two things work together in a genuinely dreadful way. There will be people in his future who will, like Bella, allow the latter to cloud their estimates of the former. His occasional capacity for savage, controlled malice will be underestimated again and again in times to come. But right now, for all the darkness in him, Sirius is still only a sixteen year old boy who has just cut himself off completely from any hope of reconciliation with his own family. If Bella ever tells any of them what he's done to her, they won't just disown him. They'll probably hunt him down and kill him.

Not that she _will_ tell. Not if she hopes to marry in a few weeks – no pureblooded bridegroom Sirius knows of will ever accept a barren bride. Still, Sirius now knows, from first-hand experience, that Bellatrix Black is insane, and there's no guessing what she might do. He has to get out of this house at once.

He hurriedly dresses in street-robes and cloak, stuffing a few of the most vital things he can grab into his pockets as he does, and quickly pulls his boots on. He hears the first angry pounding on the wood of his bedroom door, hears his name called from outside. He needs to get out right now.

He goes to one of the bedroom windows and opens it. He notices that the full moon is setting as he marks the precarious path he can take across the roofs of the adjoining buildings and down to the street below. If he can just get that far …

His door is rattling in its frame now, and he hears his mother's voice just outside, high and shrill, beginning to bellow angry imprecations. He throws a single, frightened, grief-stricken glance at the door, and then turns back to the window.

Now is the time. Sirius is outlined in the fading pale rays of the sinking moon for a moment more, and then a huge black dog stands in his place, front paws on the windowsill. The animal flows up over the casement and out into the night, and its sable coat soon blends perfectly into the darkness; only the dog's pale eyes are occasionally visible in the faint moonlight as it picks its four-footed way across the rooftops.

Sirius Black has run away from home. Twenty long years will pass before he ever sees it again. Bella, in all those years, will keep their shared secret, and although it, perhaps, does fester in her, she never once breathes a word.

But she will never underestimate her cousin again. And the next time she wants to come at him, she will heed her cousin's advice. She will bring a wand.


	7. Chapter VII

_VII._

Our favorite prisoner, Sirius, is never loathe to blame himself.

Although he is as frightened of some aspects of himself as he is of anything, he has never, so far as we have been able to learn, acted in a less than genuine way, however ruthless, and he judges himself far more harshly than he would most others of his kind. But he is always willing to accept another helping of guilt and ashes.

This guilt too is as delectable a delicacy as his dread, his grief, his loathing. It has a toxic piquancy to tempt even the most jaded palate. It is a subtle venom we much enjoy prodding out of old wounds and the infected places in old recollections.

But the one crime for which he judges himself the _most_ harshly is one of the two he has not actually committed. It is a delectable irony, as well as one of the rarest commodities of all, here in our prison domain. Our prisoner is _innocent_. We can taste it in his every thought. We can taste his own knowledge of this fact equally clearly. He has never done any of the things he has been put here in our hands for.

This innocence, this irony, adds savor to every encounter we have with him. It is a luscious extra flavor that enhances all the rest. Each of us hopes the warm blooded creatures outside our sphere who have condemned him never realize their error. We would be loathe to ever let him go. We have all grown so fond of our Sirius.

He has done none of the things for which he has been condemned. But he has done much for which he condemns himself. He is innocent, but in no way is he completely blameless. There are black moments hidden in his memory still.

We expect to winnow them all out, in time. We expect to devour them all.

Ahhhh. Our Sirius.


	8. Chapter VIII

_VIII._

There are three dementors in Sirius' cell on this drizzly, grey early morning. They are the third shift in a twenty-four hour marathon of psychic poking and prodding and the constant ghostly pricking of their avaricious questioning. They have been at him all night and Sirius, too exhausted to continue the opposition they relish so avidly, has opted out of the forced dance until further notice. Padfoot is curled up against one wall of the cell, pale eyes closed and tail tucked neatly over snout. He is almost asleep, resting comfortably in the corner furthest away from the wet dawn draft flowing through the window, but his peaked ears still react to small sounds and occasionally his paws twitch.

Sirius does not know why he can still work this one magic; the most complex he has ever learned. He has been in prison for six years now, the prized pet of the dementors, and he barely remembers the simplest of charms.

He remembers, vaguely, learning one of the first spells he was ever taught to do with a wand, a common elementary lesson for magical children – lighting a fire.

His father had taught him, and it had been so easy, really, he'd been able to grasp that focusing of the imagination and peculiar mental twitch of the will so readily it had been as if he'd known just how to do it all along. It had seemed much more like play than like work to him. His dad had been quite pleased by his small son's natural aptitude, but he'd also been quite displeased at how little effort it had cost the boy to learn the spell and then perform it. So he'd made his son repeat the spell perfectly one hundred times before he would allow that Sirius had learned it properly. This repetitive drilling had taken all the fun and novelty out of the new magic for young Sirius, but ever afterwards, he had been able to light a fire any time, under any conditions: dead drunk, or deathly ill, or standing on his head, or sitting in a bathtub at the bottom of a lake in a torrential downpour.

Now, however, he imagines he could be standing in a bucket of Muggle petrol inside a blast-furnace in a forest fire, and he'd likely _still_ need a match.

But in spite of this, it seems, he can still find the magical path to Padfoot, perhaps because it is a magic more fueled by passion and gut instinct than ruled by logic and conscious will. Once, long ago, when he had been watching over Remus after a particularly bad transformation, and had been chatting with him softly to take his mind off the pain, Remus had asked him, in his shy, quiet way, what it was like, becoming Padfoot. How sad Moony had looked as he'd asked; Sirius had been acutely aware of how wistful a question it had really been. Moony had known that he himself would never experience such a journey. His own transformations were forced on him by a curse, the Wolf rudely and abruptly grafted on to a nature spectacularly ill-suited to it. How could he have ever explained to Remus, who was obliged to fight a constant border war to maintain what integrity of self he could, that the Animagus spells were mostly a matter of relinquishing those same borders willingly? Becoming Padfoot was a little like turning one's own identity inside-out; but Remus did that literally, physically, every month. Sirius had been ashamed to say how truly easy it was for him by comparison, but he had described the process for Remus as truthfully as he could just the same.

Now, in Azkaban, Sirius has to fight a kind of border war of his own. The crawling, constant, greedy attentions of the dementors are also an assault to the identity. He has found that when his own thoughts and emotions become too hopelessly snarled, and he is starting to forget who he is, Padfoot's more elemental approach to life can be a refuge.

Padfoot is resting now, easily taking the repose that Sirius himself needs desperately but could not quite get to while he was the object of his keepers' enamored attention. They have come to adore him and covet him, he must admit to himself, he would be the apple of their eyes if they possessed eyes or valued any delicacy other than misery. Their monstrous affection cannot be put aside, and there are times when Sirius cannot even think of it without being tempted to start screaming.

And if he ever started doing _that_, he believes, there's a good chance he might never stop.

_Sirius…please talk to us. Sirius. _

_Sirius? _

Padfoot's simpler, far less nuanced thoughts are profoundly confusing to the dementors. They can sense many of the familiar components of their favorite prisoner in the great black dog, and many of the most dreadful memories are exactly the same. But Padfoot has never taken any of these things as hard as his human alter-ego has. Padfoot's canine sensibilities can be shockingly brutal, but they never hurt, and there is no malice or wickedness or regret in any of them.

_Sirius? Can you hear? Won't you answer us? _

_Sirius? _

_Sirius?_

The forlorn, disappointed edge in the dementors' nagging calls might have given Sirius a certain bitter satisfaction, had he heard it as himself. But Padfoot isn't interested much at all in these bloodless things that hang about the cell, cluttering up its scents and making such a dry, rattling racket. He is satisfied enough to have found a place out of the cold, rain-sodden air from the window to rest in, and he intends to eat the scraps of food left in the bowl by the cell door once the dementors get tired of all their nagging and calling and leave. Padfoot is slightly tempted to drive them out of his territory with barking and snapping, and he would certainly kill them if he could. The various scraps of Sirius' human views that are left in Padfoot's consciousness are more than enough to identify the things as deadly enemies. But Sirius has also left a few specific inhibitions behind in Padfoot's consciousness too, and he knows that he is strictly forbidden to bark or to attack.

He doesn't think he'd actually want to bite them anyway, the brittle, snuffling things. They don't smell quite right.

Padfoot and Sirius have always been enmeshed in a strange sort of mutual balance. When the dog is ascendant, some of the man's thoughts still remain, guiding his behavior and occasionally illuminating his simpler canine intelligence. And when the man is ascendant, sometimes what the dog sees as truth colors and shapes everything the man thinks he knows.

Padfoot is sometimes impatient with the bizarre impressions and tiresomely complicated conceits and restrictions Sirius leaves behind in his head. A good dog is a wonderful animal, loyal, loving, protective, often funny, frequently charming, a very good friend indeed. And Padfoot, as he himself knows full well, is a _very_ good dog. But a dog is also a predator, and has been designed, through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, to hunt and kill prey with deadly effectiveness. Even the most adorable, most sweet natured of dogs is also a killer.

_Sirius? Sirius? Sirius? _

_Sirius ..?_

Sirius is no longer present to hear their endless calls and pleas. And Padfoot couldn't care less _what_ they have to say. One of Sirius' memories overtakes Padfoot as he drifts into a light doze, and he thinks, with a certain doggy satisfaction, of his own part in all that Sirius remembers.


	9. Chapter IX, parts 1, 2, 3

_IX_.

_1._

On the night Sirius runs away from his home, he does his running on four feet instead of two. All the terrible things that he's seen, all that's been done to him, and all that he himself has done in retaliation – all this has begun to boil over in him as he creeps across the rooftops and then lopes through the empty streets. He is unable to think or plan or decide what to do next, once the need for immediate action has passed and the inevitable emotional reaction sets in. Sirius is in shock. So he leaves Padfoot in charge instead; the dog is mercifully incapable of comprehending the dreadful subtleties of human crimes and betrayals.

Padfoot runs endlessly through the night as the full moon above him sets; the physical act of running is pleasing to the dog, and, on some level, is calming to the newly homeless teenaged boy inside him. Sirius does not have any goal or destination in mind on this night of endless running, but Padfoot, whose thoughts are so much simpler and more direct, has. He makes straight for James Potter's house.

Had Sirius been doing the steering, he might not have allowed this. He knows that James will be at home, of course, his family still celebrates Samhain, just as the Blacks do, although they are moving further and further away from the old fashioned custom with every passing generation. But he would never want to involve _anyone_ he cares for in the macabre disputes of his own ancient and grotesque family. And he would be terribly ashamed to describe to James, let alone anyone else, the events that can occur in a familial madhouse where moral niceties are so reversed and the mania for bloodlines is so paramount that full-scale sexual assault might be considered a suitable Halloween prank, or even an acceptable prelude to a marriage arrangement.

But Padfoot is also incapable of comprehending the concept of shame. He needs refuge on this night; food, warmth, welcome. He knows just where such things can be found. And although Padfoot is ascendant now, some small shreds of Sirius' own needs have remained behind in the dog's heart as well, just as they always do, and have influenced the dog's decisions. Padfoot needs refuge, but Sirius, more than anything else, needs his best friend on this terrible night, however reluctant he may be to involve him in his atrocious affairs. Padfoot simply takes them both where they most need to go.

Padfoot arrives on the Potter's doorstep just as the night sky above is beginning to grey into the dawn, and as that icy pre-dawn rush of cold air chills the world around him. Sirius inside the dog recognizes the location at once, but is so torn between want and will that he's unable to make any choice or provide any influence at all. Padfoot, however, is much more single minded; he directs his tired paws to the soft earth of the flower beds bordering the Potter's cottage and tramples through assorted medicinal herbs and flowers to the window of James' room. Once beneath the proper window-sill, he commences to scrape at the glass with his paws and whine piteously before Sirius can think better of it.

James' window rises shortly in response to Padfoot's whining, and his dark head pokes out over the casement not long afterward. His eyes are puffed from sleep, looking strangely naked without his glasses, and his hair stands out all over his head in corkscrews, even messier than normal. A fierce wave of love and pleasure and unadulterated happiness courses through both dog and boy at the sight of James, and Padfoot chuffs with joy to greet him.

"_Padfoot_?" James says, surprised and instantly concerned for his friend. "Sirius? What are you doing here? What's happened? Are you all right?"

He raises his window as high as it will go immediately, and beckons to the dog.

"Come on, quick, get inside. It's freezing out there. No, no – transform, you prat, Padfoot can't climb over this casement. Mum's gonna go spare, you know, when she sees what you've done to her mugwort plants. There, that's it…like that…"

James tugs, and Sirius, newly reconstituted into his human form, wriggles, and eventually, between the two of them, they manage to get Sirius through the window and into James' bedroom.

Once inside, Sirius is so overcome with bone-deep relief at seeing his friend, and is so dismayed at how very much he'd _needed_ to see him, that he is unable to say a word. He simply stands and stares at James, hungrily taking in every feature of his familiar face, soaking up every bit of his comforting presence.

James stares back at him for some time, and finally speaks, very softly. He seems to sense that Sirius will not want to rouse James' parents without having to be told.

"Right. I can see it's something pretty bad. You'd better sit down. C'mon."

He puts a hand on Sirius' arm and gently guides him toward his bed, the nearest available soft surface for sitting. Once there, he moves his hand to his friend's shoulder and pushes down, just a touch, and Sirius responds to the nonverbal prompting by sitting on the edge of the bed, limbs moving in a rigid, cautious way that is completely unlike him. James then sits down next to Sirius, stretches his legs out and crosses them at the ankles, and simply waits.

In time, Sirius runs a hand through his hair and speaks, also very quietly. His voice has a strange, soft-rough quality to it, as though his vocal chords haven't yet completely adapted to shaping human language again.

"Thanks. For letting me in. I owe you."

"Oh, stop. You don't owe me anything, except maybe that two Galleons you _still_ haven't paid me from that bet we had on the Cannons. Are you ready to talk yet? What have those loonies back at Chez Black done _now_?"

Sirius body jerks involuntarily at this all too accurate assessment. In part, he can barely even imagine telling someone like James, who has a normal, loving family, just how bad things can really get at "Chez Black". But another part of him wants, so desperately, to confide in the one person in the world he trusts above any other. He's full of some nameless poison; if he can just tell someone what has happened, some of that corrosive poison could, perhaps, be drained off.

"I've run away," he finally says to James. "Just so you know. I can't ever go back, not ever. There may well be some trouble about it down the line, and it could be … bad trouble. You need to know that too. Help me at all, and you're involved. Your parents as well. It's serious."

James nods, slowly, showing Sirius that he is indeed heeding his warnings in the grave spirit in which they have clearly been given. "All right. I understand. Now go on. Tell me what happened."

Sirius looks down at his hands a moment, lying white and lifeless in his lap. When he looks up again, he stares directly into James' eyes, and his own eyes are bright with the repressed tears he does not dare allow himself to shed.

"Are you quite sure you want to hear it?" he asks. "I'm not even sure I can tell you. It's just so … it's just so bloody awful. My life seems to have turned into some kind of a sick soap opera overnight. I …" He suddenly stands, a little shakily, nervousness starting to overcome him. "I'd better go. You'd be a lot better off if you just steered right clear, you know, Prongs."

James stands too, and faces his friend, partly blocking Sirius' body with his own. A gentle touch pushes Sirius back down. James sits next to him again, and smiles. "You know I can never stay clear of your messes, Paddy. Never have been able to, chuckle-headed sort that I am. No brains or better judgment at all. Evans would tell you. Go on – just tell me quick, it'll be easier." He puts his arm around his friend, and is alarmed at how tense the muscles of Sirius' body feel under his arm.

But Sirius always responds well to a friendly touch. Nothing gets through to him quicker; James knows this as well as Sirius' mother does, although it would never even occur to him to use the knowledge as a weapon. He feels those same tense muscles loosening slightly under his touch, and to both comfort and encourage his friend, he rubs Sirius' back a little.

"You can't ever repeat to anyone what I'd tell you," Sirius says, staring again into James' eyes. "Not anyone, no matter how close. Not your mum and dad. Not Peter. Not Remus. _Especially_ not Remus. Understand? You have to promise me, James, all right?"

"But … I don't know what I'm promising, Sirius. What do you mean – especially not Remus? How'd _he_ get involved in whatever this is?"

Sirius barks out a short, frighteningly bitter laugh, not his usual laugh but an ugly, harsh sound. There is no humor in it at all. "Oh, Moony's involved all right. Mixed up in it right up to his neck. _I_ fucking saw to that. I know it isn't fair of me, but could you promise me anyway, James? I'm sorry it has to be that way - I don't want to …but it has to be that way. I'm sorry – I really am. Can you do it? Please?"

"Sirius…I…" James says doubtfully, and pauses, scanning his friend's troubled, overly bright eyes. And then all of James' doubt is gone: this is his brother, this is Sirius. "All right, then. I promise."

Sirius nods, only once. He needs nothing more than James' word, it is as solid and unbreakable as a blood contract. He then simply opens his mouth and recounts the night's events. His voice is a low, quick and almost lifeless monotone; he neither stumbles over the worst details nor glosses over the lowest points. Sirius tells his best friend _everything_. James is struck by an odd impression as he listens; it seems to him as though Sirius is somehow exorcising these horrible events in the telling, is somehow putting them away from himself.

Afterward, once the story is complete, both boys sit for a moment in silence: Sirius is deeply ashamed, and James is stunned. James recovers first, and his initial comments come barreling out of his throat without making any of the usual stops at his brain for suitable censorship.

"Bugger it all, Sirius! You don't have to let a thing like that go! Goddamnit, I'd like to fly over there right now and burn the house down over all their heads myself. You ought to have the whole lot of those perverted maniacs locked up. There are laws against this sort of thing, for God's sake."

"As if anyone in the world would believe _me_," Sirius retorts sharply. "Don't be stupid. _I'm_ one of them – I'm one of the perverted maniacs you're talking about. Everyone in the wizarding world knows all about the Blacks, you know what they all think about us, don't pretend you don't. They'd laugh me out of the Ministry if I went there with a story like this. Or if I was really lucky, I'd get a sweet biscuit and a nice cuppa before I got tossed out. Because even if they believed every word I said, they wouldn't interfere. Not with the _Blacks_."

James is shaking his head, though he knows it's the truth. "You're not one of them," he says. "I always knew you _must_ be adopted. It's the only explanation. You're not one of them."

"I'm _not_ adopted, James, whatever you say. That sick bitch Bellatrix could be my twin."

James shakes his head again, but this time it is with a sense of futility. Then he remembers something, and he looks up at Sirius again. "I … I think Bella might be a Death Eater, Sirius," James says, worriedly. "I've heard a few bits of gossip, snatches of talk here and there – I wasn't going to say anything to you about it, since she's your cousin. What good would it do? But … but you've just fucked her up in _huge_ way; it doesn't matter that it was self-defense, you know she'll want to fuck back if it takes her the rest of her life. So… if…if you mentioned Remus to her … er… while you were sleeping …and she was …then-"

"Then every Death Eater in Britain is going to know the name 'Moony' before the week is out. Yes, James, I know. All because I couldn't keep my _bloody_ mouth shut while being ambush-fucked by my insane cousin. Nice, isn't it? Romantic, don't you think? I can hardly wait to tell him all about it. He'll be delighted."

"It's not your fault!" James argues, automatically. "He'd understand that. You know he would."

"James. Prongs… it … it wasn't self-defense. Don't you get that?" Sirius can no longer look James in the eye and gazes down at his hands again. The lines of his face have hardened, and for a moment, he looks very much the way he will when he is much older than he is tonight. Then he goes on.

"I just - I was just so - so angry and so frightened … anyway, I just went berserk … and then I … I got even. Not self-defense, James. Revenge. I got _even_ with her. Not another thought in my fucking empty head. And now Bella is going to try and get even with me by fucking over _Remus_. Do you think he'll understand _that_?"

James moves his hand to his friend's shoulder and squeezes firmly, almost hard enough to hurt. "Look at me, Sirius," he says. He waits until he is sure that he has Sirius' full attention, until he can once again see his friend's eyes.

"Listen to me. What the hell were you supposed to do, send her flowers and a thank you note? Let her claim that you attacked _her_? Let your daft parents and hers announce your _engagement_, for God's sake? This is not your fault. That cow _assaulted_ you - she thought you'd be easy prey for her nasty little games, and she was wrong. You fought back. You had a _right_. That's all there is to it. This is not your fault, Sirius."

"Whose fault is it, then? And what does it matter? Think about Moony for a moment, James. Think about how hard he is to get close to, about how long it took us to really make friends with him, to get him to trust us. Here's what _I_ know about Moony – he's got more burdens on his mind than you or I can even imagine, and he's the most skittish, stand-offish person I've ever met in my life, and he's got good reason to be. _You're_ the one who started calling him Fortress Moony; you know exactly what I mean."

Sirius stops, and lowers his voice. James can barely hear him. "I've never breathed a _word_ to him about … how I feel, I wouldn't dare – he'd likely bolt – even leave school - if he didn't just drop dead of sheer embarrassment first. Honestly, I've hardly known myself what it was I felt about him, until my charming cousin gave me a little nudge. I still don't know if I'd ever tell him, even now, and that's the truth. Now imagine him finding out about it like _this_."

Sirius stops once more, rakes his hands through his hair again, and utters another sharp, miserable bark of laughter. "D'you want to know the real hell of it, James? God - what a _joke_ all this is, at least Bella was right about that. I do hear what a lot of people say about me at school, you know, I've gotten the gist of it. Everybody knows I've fucked half our form, right? Girls, boys, the squid, whatever; I'm not picky, according to all the _highly_ informed sources who'd be glad to tell you all the sordid details. But it's just all nonsense, the whole lot. Not a word is true. Believe it or not, Bella was my first. Think I should tell Remus that, too?"

James is unable to think of anything to say to Sirius that could make any of these things any easier for him. The only thing he really has to say will be the last thing his friend will want to hear. But he knows he will have to say it anyway, so he pulls Sirius a little closer, tightens his arm around his best friend's shoulders to soften the blow. It never occurs to James, not that night, and not until years later, that he is not actually surprised at all to learn that Sirius' feelings for their mutual friend go somewhat beyond the conventional. It is almost as though he's half known it all along. He pulls Sirius a little closer still.

"Sirius – I know all that," he says. "It's a cock-up – there are always some people who just hate the ground you walk on – just because you're you. The same way our good friend Mr. Snape hated _my_ guts right from the first time he laid eyes on me, before I'd ever done a thing to earn it. Of _course_ I believe that bitch from hell was your first if you say she was - I don't listen to all that stupid rubbish people talk about you - I know better."

He presses his forehead against Sirius', and his voice drops to a whisper. "But now you need to listen to me, Sirius. You need to warn Remus. Even if – even if it means telling him everything. Even if it means Fortress Moony going on high alert for the rest of our lives. You can't let Bella walk around with his name rattling about in her evil fucking head without warning him to watch out."

"No! No, James … I … I can't do that. I just can't. I just can't tell him, not about this. He'd never forgive me."

"You can't let him go around unprotected, Sirius."

"I won't. _I'll_ do the watching out for him. I'll keep an eye on him, make sure he's all right – I'll protect him. I'm the one who got him into this whole revolting mess, after all, it's the least I can do."

"No, _Bella_ got him into it – not you! If lightning just happens to strike you and someone standing near you gets hit, that is not your fault. Do you really think you can keep Moony under your eyes every minute of the day indefinitely? Do you think he won't notice? Do you think he'll appreciate you trying to wrap him up in spun wool? He's already bristling – haven't you noticed the way Snivelly's been _dogging_ him all this year?"

"_Yes_," Sirius whispers, miserably. "Yes, I have noticed _that_. Yet another fun thing Remus can thank _me_ for – Severus stalking him that way. The two of them probably wouldn't have had a problem at all, if not for me."

"If not for _us_, Sirius. I'm as responsible as you are, probably more so. The point is, Moony can't afford to be blindsided, especially now, with Snivellus crawling around after him, trying to figure things out. You can't watch out for him all the time."

Sirius eyes positively burn as he considers all that James has said. It all makes perfect sense. And he is completely unable to agree to any of it.

"Yes, I can," he says to James, closer to tears than he has yet been at any time in the horrible night just passed. "I can, because I'll have to. I am not going to put any of _my_ twisted little family drama on Moony, not _any_ of it. He's got enough of his own to deal with, and he is _not_ going to pay just because he was stupid enough to be friends with me, or because I was stupid enough to – to – I'll watch out for him. You're right about all this, James, I know you are. But… this is the best I can do. I'm sorry – I just can't tell him. I'm not going to change my mind about this."

James gauges the haunted expression in Sirius' face, the hunched and closed set of his body, the painful brightness of his eyes.

"Sirius – for the last time. _This is a mistake_. It can't lead to anything but more trouble."

"I'm so afraid you're right, James." Sirius says, quietly. He hides his face in his hands.

Clearly, further arguments will be pointless. Sirius is thinking with his heart. It's his nature; he is who he is, he cannot be anything other. James wouldn't want him to be anything other. The question has become moot.

"You daft bugger," James says at last, and pulls his dearest friend into a full embrace, hugs him tight.

In time, Sirius relaxes into him, because nothing comforts him more than physical contact, it is the one language in the world he is most fluent in, despite precious little practice. After a time, he curls up and rests his cheek against James' knee and sighs tiredly. He must be _exhausted_, James suddenly realizes, and he strokes his friend's head, running his fingers over the thick black hair, forgetting, for the moment, exactly where the boundary between Sirius and Padfoot lies.

"All right, then," James finally says to Sirius, huddled in his lap. "We both know you can't keep an eye on him constantly, but I'll be damned if I let either of you get hurt. I'll help you. We'll _both_ keep an eye on Remus, all right? I'll help you watch over him."

Sirius heaves another tired, gusty sigh. It racks his whole body, James can feel it under his hands and against his own frame. He doesn't know whether it signifies relief or misery or contentment. Perhaps it's a strange amalgamation of all three.

"All right, then, James," Sirius repeats, finally. His voice is small, and, oddly enough, sleepy. He has nothing left, clearly, his reserves are fully depleted. If James continues to pet him, he will be asleep in minutes. "If you help, maybe, between the two of us, we might actually manage."

"Don't count on it," James warns.

"I never count on anything much, Prongs. Except you. I do count on you."

"Only because, as I might have mentioned, you are a daft bugger from a long line of daft buggers and you don't know any better."

Sirius laughs, a little, the only really good laughter he has uttered in over twelve hours.

"Well, all that may be, Potter, but that's not the reason. And the reason's not your pathetic obsession with Lily Evans or your hideous snoring or your ridiculous hair either."

"I don't snore."

"Don't interrupt me. No, the reason is because you're the best friend I've ever had and because I …love you." When next he speaks, his voice sounds small and quiet again. "Thank you for helping me, I know it's against your better judgment."

James pets Sirius some more, because Sirius needs it and because James loves him too.

"W_hat_ better judgment, Black? I thought we'd established what a mutton-headed prat I am when I let you in the house in the first place. And don't think I'm planning to take the blame when Mum sees how you trampled up her mugwort plants. Just wait until she finds out…"

James lets his dire predictions of maternal wrath trail off quietly. Sirius, lulled at last by James' familiar voice and James' soothing hands, has fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep.

_2._

After four weeks of being treated to almost constant surveillance by two of his mates; Remus Lupin finally loses his temper.

James and Sirius have tried to take watching over Remus in shifts, hoping that some variation in which of them will be acting as his shadow at any given time may make the overall pattern of scrutiny less obvious. They have both known what a laughably faint hope it has been all along.

After the first week, Remus had asked James if anything was bothering him. James had feigned complete, baffled incomprehension, and Remus had not pressed him. Not that time.

A week later, he'd asked Sirius why on earth he was in such a foul mood lately, cranky and nervous as a cat, as well as a bit … well…clingy. Did Sirius think that he, Remus, was sick in some way? Sirius had vehemently denied everything, and that time Remus _had_ pressed a little, in his generally reasonable, polite manner. Since Sirius was busy lying through his teeth at the time, and was acutely aware of it, his responses had been a bit less reasonable and polite than he'd intended, or than Remus' gentle questioning had warranted. A slight strain had developed between them as a result.

After four weeks of being unable even to slip off to the Prefect's Bathroom for half a minute without an honor guard, Remus' nerves have become critically frayed. Two days before the full moon, he leaves a small note on James' pillow on Saturday morning; the note reads

_"Went down to breakfast 7:45, E.T.A. 7:50 AM – expected duration of meal 20.05 minutes unless A.) Second helping of toast consumed; or B.) Bacon available. – Will be in library appx. 8:10/8:15 AM – Pls inform Sirius if you are not on duty this morning. –R."_

When Sirius shows up, rather out of breath, in the library at twenty minutes after eight that same morning, Remus asks him, very seriously, if he is a ghost.

"A what?" Sirius asks, utterly foozled. "Am I a what?"

"I asked if you're a _ghost_, Sirius," Remus answers, the temperature of his voice plunging as the expression on his face becomes more and more deceptively blank. "A specter? An apparition? A revenant? Are you a spirit, spook or long-leggedy-beastie? Are you a GHOST, Sirius?"

Sirius knows he's in deep trouble at this point, but he can't quite suppress the amusement Remus' increasingly sharp questions inspire. Nothing in the world is funnier than Remus in full sarcasm mode. Nothing much is scarier, either. Sirius also knows it's extremely unwise of him to be visibly trying not to laugh while Remus is staring at him in that quizzical way he sometimes has; such quizzical looks and arched eyebrows are often precursors to Remus' rare, but memorable, fits of temper.

"Well, Remus, I really don't _think_ I'm a ghost," Sirius says, trying to get prepared to be verbally sliced and diced, and still trying not to laugh. "But, now that you mention it, I'm not entirely sure how one would tell with any real certainty. What makes you ask? Do I look like a ghost?"

"No. You act like a ghost."

"Er…how d'you mean, exactly?"

"I was just wondering if perhaps you'd died somewhere along the line and had forgotten to mention it? Have you decided to _haunt_ me for the rest of my life? Pop up everywhere I go and never give me a moment's peace? Dog my footsteps every minute and follow me around constantly and generally drive me insane?"

"I … I have no idea what you're talking –"

"Why would you want to haunt me, Sirius, that's what I'd like to know. Was it that time I stole your chewy boot? Maybe that time I accidentally gave you that bad potion and your fingers sprouted vines? That time we put that _Parrotus_ charm on Mrs. Norris so she'd say 'Hello, I'm a rotten cat' to everyone and you got caught and got detention and I got away clean?"

"This is nonsense, Remus! Complete rubbish. You're imagining the whole thing!"

Remus closes the book he's been reading with a resounding snap and rises from his seat as though he's on springs. Other than one tiny vein pulsing rather alarmingly in his forehead, his face might be made of stone.

"I see," he hisses. "You're not an apparition, you're a hallucination, is that right? A figment of my imagination? I'm not really seeing you in the library at eight on a Saturday morning at all? Is that what you're telling me, Sirius?"

"Well. Hmmph. Can't a fellow drop by the library for a bit of studying without you jumping down his throat? Do you own the place or something?"

"In the six years I've known you, I've never once seen you out of _bed_ this early on a Saturday morning, much less in the library! I'm surprised you could even _find_ it! Normally, we'd need a crowbar and a professional curse-breaker to pry you out of the kip before noon! And now you're telling me I'm imagining the whole thing? Are you standing there with an incredibly idiotic look on your face right now or NOT?"

"Remus … I … I really think you ought to try and calm down a-"

"_Why_ are you and James following me everywhere I go? Why won't either of you tell me what's wrong? What in the name of God's gotten into the two of you?"

"But we're not following y-"

"STOP _LYING_ TO ME, SIRIUS!"

Because this is the crux of the matter, these four weeks of virtually continuous lying, Sirius does not dare say a word to Remus. His face pales as he sits down heavily in one of the library chairs, eyes wide and regarding his friend mutely. The past weeks have taken their toll on Sirius' nerves too. In this moment, he is so tempted to confess all to Moony that he has to clench his teeth and press his lips together tightly to keep his own mouth shut.

Remus sees the blood draining out of Sirius face, sees the small tic in his jaw as his teeth clench. Some of the hot anger and frustration he feels fades as he marks the clear wretchedness in Sirius' expression. He makes one last effort.

"Sirius, you're my best friend. Not Peter, not even James. _You_. Please. Tell me what's wrong. Don't you know that there's nothing you can't tell me? Just tell me what's wrong and we can sort it out together, all right? How can anything be _so_ terrible that you can't tell me what it is? Please, Sirius …"

Remus has taken a few steps closer to Sirius as he's spoken, and now he is only inches away from his friend, close enough to see the minute movements of his lips. He can see that Sirius' mouth is trembling, although he is struggling hard to suppress it. Remus impulsively reaches out toward Sirius in an extremely rare offering of physical contact; Remus does not yield any portion of his personal space easily or lightly. His fingers stretch tentatively toward Sirius' pale cheek.

And Sirius, who knows far too well that he will instantly break down and spill his guts if Remus' fingertips should even touch his skin, jerks his head away from the proffered touch and shrinks into his chair. He understands that Remus sees it as a rejection even before he has completed the convulsive movement. He has to shut his eyes for a moment against the sight of the quickly controlled hurt in Remus' face as he pulls his hand back and away.

"I see," Remus grinds out quietly, clipping his syllables short. "Fine. Just as you wish, then. I'm leaving."

As Remus stalks stiffly away from the library table, Sirius is almost too miserable to say a word. James has been right all along, this _is_ a mistake, and it's a mistake that's growing and widening and deepening every day. Sirius isn't quite sure how he _can_ bollocks things up any worse than he already has, but he is dismally sure that he'll probably find a way. He has a certain genius in that respect.

"Remus," he calls thickly, willing his suddenly recalcitrant tongue to move. "Wait."

Remus is near the door of the library, about to walk out. It is very good of him, Sirius thinks briefly, to stay his steps for a moment, to give Sirius one more chance.

A pity he'll have to mess that chance up too.

"Yes, Sirius?" Remus says carefully.

"Er …" Sirius says. "Where are you going? Where are you going to be?"

While Sirius paled a few moments earlier, Remus now flushes a hot, angry red. He opens his mouth to reply and Sirius can see his teeth, but then he makes an enormous visible effort, and bites back whatever scathing comment he had been about to make. Sirius, in six years, has rarely seen Remus so angry.

Remus clearly cannot trust himself to talk just now. But his actions are eloquent; it's the worst possible body language he could choose to use on Sirius. He wrenches himself about and deliberately turns his back on his friend.

Sirius very nearly cries out in pain. He has to bow his head against it.

Remus walks away.

_3._

Two days pass. Remus studiously avoids the common room, and even stays out of the dormitory until he is certain his roommates will have sought their beds and he can slip in without having to talk to any of them. James and Sirius have to track his movements with the Map; he has not said a word to either of them in forty-eight hours. As the hours run down toward the full moon, James and Sirius become more and more desperate, Peter grows more and more frightened as he nearly smothers in the mysterious, swirling currents of charged emotion between his three friends, and the Wolf in Remus inexorably pushes forward as his time draws near, making the already angry boy more and more unapproachable.

James and Sirius discuss the matter privately, and decide that perhaps James has the best chance of broaching the subject of the upcoming full moon to Remus without getting his head snapped off. They both agree that Sirius, as things now stand, hasn't a hope.

But it's Peter who forces the thing to a head. He doesn't know that he's walking into a minefield, after all, and Sirius and James have been too distracted to warn him. On the afternoon before the full moon will rise, right after Potions, he patters after Remus, who is swiftly walking off down the corridor before the others can catch up with him. James and Sirius follow at a slight distance, trying to catch up themselves, both uncomfortably aware that they may well be witnessing a train wreck in progress.

They can't hear what Peter has said to Remus once he catches him up, but they can see how Remus has rounded on him in response, eyes blazing and hands drawn up into claws. They could both kick themselves for letting poor Peter in for this.

"Hear me now, _Wormtail_," Remus is growling when the other two catch up. "Watch my lips. I. Don't. Need. Your. Help."

"But … you …" Peter starts to object, shocked by Remus' uncharacteristic sudden rage. James quickly steps in and puts one arm around Peter's shoulders, drawing him aside while he shushes him with a finger to his lips. Sirius steps into the gap and blocks both of them from Remus' view.

"Remus – you need to be reasonable for a moment, all right? You _will_ need us – just for a little while – just for tonight, and-" Sirius starts to say, but Remus cuts him short.

"I know this will come as a great shock to you, _Padfoot_, but I've been doing this all by myself every month since I was four. What were you doing when _you_ were four?"

Getting the snot knocked out of me by my own mother every time I tried to give her a baby-kiss and learning how to cast curses, Sirius thinks, stung. Remus has never before used their special names for one another as insults. He pronounces them as though they are dirty words. Sirius tries very hard to remember that it is the Wolf doing the talking now, as much as it is Remus.

"Remus …" Sirius tries again. "Look …"

Remus is in Sirius' space in a heartbeat, so infuriated he almost seems to have grown in physical size. His anger takes up all the room that Sirius has.

"No, _you_ look," Remus snarls, moving his face to within inches of Sirius' and lowering his voice to a rumble. "Set foot inside the Shack tonight, _in any form_, and I won't be responsible for what happens to you. Hear me, _Paddy_? Got your ears out? Stay away. Stay right the fuck away. _Leave us alone_."

Remus abruptly turns his back on Sirius once again, and then fairly sprints off down the hall. Sirius doesn't know whether to cast a quick hex on him before he can get out of range, or burst into tears.

"But he _never_ calls himself and - and _you-know-what_ -'us'," Peter says, too confused and upset to notice how frantically James is shaking his head at him. "Never, ever! Does he, Sirius? Why would he do that? Why doesn't he want us? Sirius? Do you know why-"

"BUGGER IT ALL TO HELL!" Sirius interrupts in tones that border on raving, and he pins Peter with a death glare that, if sustained, would quite likely kill him. Then he storms off down the hallway himself, long legs eating up ground furiously, in the opposite direction from where Remus has just gone.

After looking off down first the one hallway, and then the other, Peter, utterly bewildered, appeals to James.

"James? What'd I say?"


	10. Chapter IX, part 4

_4._

The full moon has just begun to rise.

James decides that hiding out in the common room until dinner and staying well out of both Sirius' and Remus' way for the rest of the night afterward is the wisest possible course of action he and Peter can take. He can monitor Remus from a safe distance on the Map until this particular full moon is over, and he can keep an eye on Paddy too that way. He has a very bad feeling about what the rest of the night may bring, but he can't think of any way to diffuse the ill-omened, oppressive atmosphere that seems to be brewing.

The Marauders' Map shows that Remus has apparently decided to banish the world and hole up in the Shack early; he enters it around five that afternoon and doesn't budge again as the afternoon darkens into night. Sirius' movements on the Map are a great deal more varied; he is apparently careening around the school and grounds at a great pace and entirely at random. James is reminded of the erratic path of a rogue Bludger, and he pities anyone unlucky enough to get in Sirius' way tonight. But he assures himself that one look at Sirius' no doubt murderous expression ought to be enough to warn even the most oblivious observers off.

Peter has been pestering him with anxious questions continually ever since the two of them parted company with their mates outside of Potions, and some of those questions, naturally, have been rather … sticky. James will have to start thinking of some nice, inconsequential answers sometime soon; he can't very well let poor Pete stew all night long. In the meantime, dinner is about to be served, and James knows that nothing cheers old Wormtail up like a good meal. He sighs, checks the Map once more (Remus is pacing to and fro in the Shrieking Shack, and Sirius appears to be stomping up and down stairs in the Astronomy Tower), and then folds it up and puts it in his pocket.

"C'mon, Peter," he says to his anxious friend. "Let's see if we can get down to the Dining Hall before those godless Slytherins eat up all the chipolatas, what do you say?"

The full moon is rising outside.

Sirius is observing its first faint glimmer from the observation platform of the Astronomy Tower. He has to stuff his hands in his pockets to keep them from worrying incessantly at his hair. It's a particularly asinine nervous habit, in his opinion, and if he _must_ have a tic of some sort, he wishes it didn't have to be one that makes him look like such a vain, brainless idiot. Fingernail-chewing or even thumb-sucking would be better, he thinks, and then a moment later he wonders why on earth people have to have such random, trivial thoughts skittering all willy-nilly through their heads just when they need them the least. A few minutes after that, though he doesn't know it, he's raking his fingers through his hair again.

He's grown tired of clumping up and down steps, but he is still too distraught to stop moving, and shortly he decides a moonlit stroll through the Forbidden Forest might be just the thing. And while he's on his way down there, he supposes, he might just stop by the Whomping Willow for a moment, and he might just accidentally press a certain special knot on its trunk, or then again, he might not. Only time will tell, on that score, he thinks, and in any case, even if he doesn't press that knot himself, he can certainly make sure no one else does while he's there. He has not forgotten that Severus Snape has been expressing some interest this year in where Remus goes when he periodically disappears.

Having formed a plan of sorts, however sketchy, renews Sirius' sense of purpose, or at least provides some momentary illusion of purpose. He hurtles down the tower steps recklessly, taking them two and three at a time, and the idea that he might well take a dive on the way down and kill his stupid self in the process has a great deal more appeal just now than it should.

Sirius makes it down to the bottom of the Astronomy Tower without mishap, however, and glances up at the moon as he walks out onto the grounds. A soft, odd sound comes out of his throat as he notes that the full moon is rising, a sound somewhere between a low growl and desperate groan, with, perhaps, a small, plaintive whine from Padfoot thrown in. Remus is transforming right _now_, Sirius knows; he is as intimately familiar with the progressive minute variations in the quality of the moonlight, and how each will affect Remus, as he is with the back of his own hand.

In the Shrieking Shack, _right now_, Remus is screaming, his body is turning into a house of pain as it forces itself into a cursed configuration it was never made to assume. Remus is shifting, _this moment_, Remus is transforming alone. Sirius knows this, he knows it in his head, and worse, he _feels_ it, he feels it in the precise angle at which the moonlight touches his skin.

He is so full of frustration and fear and fury and a depth of passion so intense it might move the earth itself, that as he rushes past a shadowed stand of yews on the left, he is easily suckered by a slyly outstretched foot and ankle; the oldest trick in the book, and he trips and takes a spectacular headlong tumble.

Severus Snape steps out of the shadows of the trees, smiling coolly and covering the tumbling figure of Sirius with his wand.

"Why, it's Sirius Black," Snape says, without even waiting to see if Sirius will break his neck in the fall or not. "Rushing off to parts unknown. I thought I might find you lurking about out here tonight."

Sirius hears and recognizes the voice long before the forces of gravity are quite done with him. He has his own wand out in the space between one heartbeat and the next, and is already twisting before he lands so that he can face Snape directly once he fetches up, with a loud thud, on the cold hard ground. The impact smacks most of the breath out of him, but his wand hand remains steady nonetheless.

"Snivelly!" he barks, just as soon as he can find enough breath for it. "What a coincidence. I was just thinking about you."

"How strange. Throw that wand of yours over here, why don't you, by the way."

"This wand? This old thing? Come and get it."

"I think not," Snape grinds out.

"I thought not too, Severus. Cute trick with the outstretched foot, though. Haven't seen that since first year."

"Yet you _did_, if I may be forgiven a small pun, fall for it."

"Well, you always were a real cutie, Sevvie," Sirius replies, cautiously getting back to his feet, wand never wavering from its bead on Snape's head. "Even when you were just an ickle first year grease-blot, anyone could see that. No doubt I'll have a truly brilliant bruise on my arse tomorrow. What an accomplishment! You must be thrilled!"

Snape _detests _being called 'greasy' and, what's even more galling; he knows that Sirius knows how much he hates it. Black may be a snotty, conceited, egomaniacal git, but he is very clever indeed about sensing things, one must admit. Snape racks his brains for a suitable counterattack, and escalates the hostilities by a considerable margin.

"Out here chasing after your little half-blood _tart_, Black? Has he slipped away to who knows where once more? He didn't turn you down _again_, did he? They're all so uppity, aren't they, these mixed blood bastards? I suppose that's part of the appeal for you, but to my mind it's hardly worth the effort. Why don't you just put him on the payroll; he certainly looks like he could use the money. "

This remark has a certain malign ingenuity; there's a nasty barb in it from every conceivable direction. If Sirius were not in such a towering rage, he might well take a moment to admire Snape's supernaturally sharp tongue.

"Ooh - oooh, you puffed-up, fatuous, self-deluding little toerag," Sirius spits, almost too livid to form coherent words. "Snape the Mediocre, looking down his prodigious nose at the lowly Muggle-borns. When you're not too busy trotting along after me or Malfoy with your tongue lolling out, that is."

Sirius raises his own aristocratic nose to its most arrogant angle, he lifts his chin and shakes his hair back out of his face and blasts the plainer boy with the haughty good looks he himself ordinarily thinks very little of.

"What do _you_ know about money? Or family, for that matter? Or anything else? How dare you even talk to _me_ about blood? Mine is so old it's rotten. But _you_ - your family is _nothing_ – that pure fucking blood you're so proud of is _nothing_ – and _you_ are nothing. Remus Lupin makes ten of you on his worst day."

For Snape, this is a response that goes beyond escalation and into outright war. There are elements of truth in it so piercing that it's nearly insupportable. Snape decides to take his heaviest weapons out in retaliation; he has recently been made privy to certain information that he has been assured will make Sirius Black very uncomfortable indeed.

While Sirius enunciated each cutting phrase loud and clear, Snape lowers his own voice to a hissing, spiteful whisper. Both boys are beside themselves with wrath; they have a peculiarly horrendous effect on one another, perhaps because, when all is said and done, there are quite a number of similarities between them.

Matter and anti-matter. Snape opens his mouth and triggers the coming explosion in earnest.

"Odd that you should mention family, Black. It so happens that I was actually looking for you tonight for that very reason. I've got a message for you from a member of your own family. Bellatrix sends her regards and says she wonders if a return engagement would be out of the question. She said you'd know what it meant."

Sirius goes a strange ashy white and he suddenly becomes very still. The only sound he makes is an involuntary one: a faint, low-pitched growling, deep in his throat. Padfoot too, it seems, has an opinion on this matter. Sirius grips his wand so tightly that it snaps in his hand, although Snape does not notice this.

"But just in case you don't," Snape goes on blithely, noting Sirius' initial reaction with malignant satisfaction. "She also _told_ me what it meant. So I could remind you, in the event you'd moved on to other … conquests … over the past few weeks and forgotten."

Sirius manages to find his tongue, and is momentarily surprised to learn that he hasn't bitten it off. He also manages to take a stiff step or two toward Snape, getting too close, really, for safety. But Snape, infuriated and armed with knowledge that is clearly having a powerful effect, is too foolhardy, in this moment, to back away.

"Bellatrix Black?" Sirius asks, softly now. "Deign to speak to _you_? Impossible. She's even more of a sneering pureblood lunatic than you are, Snape. You're making it up. You don't know anything about Bella. Or me."

"Oh, yes? Do you think so? I do know that you have a small, sable, key shaped birth-mark on the base of your penis. Hardly common knowledge, is it? Or - come to think of it - perhaps it is?"

Now Sirius can't talk at all. All he can do is growl and move further and further into Snape's space.

And Snape still won't give way. He has no idea of his peril; the sad fact is, he rarely ever does.

He lowers his voice still more, hisses even more vindictively as he adds one last turn of the screw.

"Bella says it's _adorable_. She wouldn't mind kissing you there right now. _Again_."

Like lightning striking, Sirius backhands Snape across the face; Snape's head snaps back and his nose instantly starts gushing blood.

Snape is momentarily blinded by pain and is absolutely stunned. Severus and Sirius are only sixteen, but they have both been active wizards for quite a long time, all the same. It is rare indeed for any dispute between magical people to come to physical blows; normally, angry wizards would trade hexes. It occurs to Snape - rather distantly, considering how his brains have just been bounced about - that perhaps his informant has not been entirely forthcoming with him. Is it possible that there are a few things Bella _hasn't_ told him? His remarks on the subject were only supposed to embarrass and annoy Sirius, not turn him into a homicidal maniac.

Snape is also too stunned at being slapped like this, both physically and mentally, to think to get his wand hand up and a counter-curse ready for a moment, and that moment is all the time Sirius needs. He's a bit bigger than Snape is, and he is now _far_ angrier. He's on the slightly smaller boy instantly, twisting the wand out of his grip with one hand and grabbing the lower half of Snape's face with the other, digging his long fingers into Severus' cheeks and chin.

"You _hit_ me!" Snape points out in almost prim disbelief, pronunciation considerably garbled by Sirius' unyielding grip on his face.

"You - miserable - little - _fuck_," Sirius grates harshly, punctuating each word with a small but vicious shake of Snape's face, gripped tightly in his hand. "Jealous, were you? Getting off on it, were you, Sevvie? Listening to that bitch's vile gossip and getting hard imagining all the little details? Just _dying_ to see my birthmark, are you, you homely, greasy, pathetic gobshite?"

Sirius presses closer still into Severus' space, until he's just a millimeter or two short of full body contact with his enemy. He forces Snapes' now furiously flushing face up with his fingers and moves his own too-pretty face too close, much too close; Snape can feel Sirius' breath on his skin, he can taste it on his own lips. Sirius' fingers are digging in so deep that he's raising bruises and he's still tilting Snape's face up, tilting it at such an angle that a suddenly panicked Snape is not sure whether Sirius intends to kiss him or sink his teeth into him. And it seems terribly strange to him, just now, that he is equally horrified by either possibility.

"Did you really think I didn't _know_, Sevvie? Do you honestly believe I can't _feel_ it, right now? All that hot, hungry wanting, all twisted up inside you? _I can smell it on you_."

Snape would like to spit in response to this last verbal assault. He would like to spit in Sirius' pretty grey eyes and shake his tapered, pinching fingers off and hammer his lithe, graceful body with enough blows to make it disappear altogether, once and for all. Because what Sirius is suggesting is not entirely untrue, or so Severus has sometimes, in his most miserable, confused, most self-hating moments, reluctantly suspected.

And hearing what Bellatrix Black had to say about her cousin _had_ been arousing; her illicit tales of tangled white limbs and silky black hair and taboos willingly and wickedly exploded in the silver moonlight _had_ been blackly exciting and he _had_ been hard as he'd listened and imagined … he had been _so_ hard …and how could Sirius _know_ this if what he was saying wasn't true?

And now Sirius _is_ kissing him, pressing his jaw open with his fingers and pushing inside. But this kiss isn't meant for pleasure; it's a lacerating expression of the utmost contempt and Snape is too humiliated and too astounded to fight Sirius off and when Sirius is finally finished plundering his mouth he shoves Snape away roughly and spits on the ground and laughs and laughs, barking, for all the world, just like a dog.

"It's not true," Snape hisses poisonously, shaken and mortified and angrier than he can ever remember being in his life. "It is _not_ true. _Take it back_. It's not true."

Sirius nods shakily and replies through a new outburst of manic laughter. "Oh - ah - actually, you're quite right, Sevvie. It's _not_ true. Close, but not - quite right. I was mistaken; so sorry. I could taste it, just now, you know. I could feel it in the set of your stiff, knobby little spine. It's not true. It's actually much worse. It's not me at all, is it? It's _Bella_ you really want, isn't it?"

Severus is too thunderstruck to reply, because _this_ assertion does have the startling punch of absolute truth, not like a mere suspicion or gnawing dread, but with that weird mental _thwock _of perception dovetailing perfectly with experience and snapping snugly into place. Snape's mouth drops open almost comically, he simply cannot _believe_ that Sirius Black, of all people, could have figured a thing like that out before he did.

"Oh, don't look so surprised, Sevvie, old boy," Sirius adds with a grotesque sort of false bonhomie. "Gape like that too much longer and something unpleasant is apt to fly down your throat. I don't blame you for being confused; the two of us do look quite a bit alike."

"Stop–" Severus starts to say, but Sirius cuts him off.

"Of course, Sevvie, you _have_ overlooked one or two fundamental differences–"

"Can't you _stop_–"

"And it doesn't hurt that she's a Black, not for a social-climbing, ambitious little swine like you. The fact is - I am finding it a bit difficult to imagine the social situation in which she'd even consider taking an interest in you, Sevvie. Right offhand, I can only think of one-"

"STOP CALLING ME 'SEVVIE', CAN'T YOU, YOU SMUG, SELF-SATISFIED, ARROGANT PRICK!" Snape finally screams.

Sirius grins in response, a horrible, wretched expression. His smile reminds Severus, for some inexplicable reason, of an angry, hurt and growling hound wrinkling his muzzle back from his teeth.

"Want a tip then, _Severus_, old mate? Just between us blokes? Frankly, you'd have as much chance of shagging my lovely cousin as you'd have of climbing into Heaven armed with a ladder and a ball of string, but if you really want to fuck her, I can tell you how you can manage. Just tell her 'no'. Just tell her you don't want her and ask her to leave you the hell alone, and I guarantee, she'll be on you like a bitch in heat in no time. Certainly worked for me."

All of Snape's guiltily held and highly detailed adolescent fantasies about how it would have been between Sirius and Bellatrix suddenly begin to rearrange themselves in his mind and take on a much uglier construction. He now realizes he's been putting himself in Sirius' place in all of them, and that Sirius' place in these lusty little scenarios is no longer a very good place to be.

Snape tries to shout at Sirius - who has always had everything _so_ easy - who has looks and talent and a brilliant mind and friends who love him and who would die for him, who has a powerful, well-known family and all the Dark Arts built right into his bloodstream and who will inherit everything in time, who was born with everything Snape has ever wanted plus a silver fucking spoon in his mouth on top and who doesn't care a whit about _any_ of it, and who, it seems, has even slept with the first woman Snape has ever desired for himself and now claims not to have ever wanted her in the first place – he tries to shout at Sirius but all the spit in his throat and mouth has dried up and he cannot.

He can only get a dry, scratchy whisper out. "That's not true, either, what you're saying. She never forced you. You're lying," he says, but he already knows from the terrible look on Sirius' blanched face that he is not. Black is many things, and most of them drive Severus Snape stark, raving mad, but Black is not a liar.

"I'm not lying," Sirius says, flatly. "I wish I were."

"But ... but she said-"

"I'm sorry, Snape. I really am. It doesn't matter what she said. If she didn't tell you how it really was, and then sent you out here to get in my face about it – then she double-crossed you too. So here's some honest advice now, no games this time, from me to you. Are you listening? _Stay away from that woman_. She's poison."

But Snape cannot hear this; not now; he cannot hear it. Because he has already believed Bellatrix Black about _other_ things, he has already made commitments that he cannot now unmake. He has allowed Bella to lead him into dark associations and darker days and ways and he now bears a secret tattoo on his arm that cannot be removed. And if all that Sirius is saying is true, then Severus has allowed himself to be led into nothing but lies and evil - cock first.

If what Sirius is saying is true, then he, Severus Snape, is the worst kind of fool.

Boys are not men. Sirius and Severus are only sixteen years old and although they will both be obliged to take on adult tasks and adult tragedies long before their time, they are not yet men, not quite, not tonight. They have both been victimized by someone who is a little older and much more cruel, and who is more truly evil than either of them will ever be. But Severus Snape is not the kind of boy who is capable of cutting himself any slack. There is very little tolerance in him, not for himself, not for anyone else, and there never will be.

"The Dark Mark," Black is now saying, using that frightening, maddening fucking intuition of his that Severus both despises and envies in equal, bitter measure. "_That_ was the one social situation I could think of, just now. She was _recruiting_. She talked you into it, didn't she? You let that insane, lying bitch make a Death Eater out of you, didn't you, Severus?"

"I was just so tired of being passed over," Severus replies dully. There's an odd sort of prickly commonality between the two boys just now; they have both been victims of sexual attacks, in a way, and both have been attacked by the same rapist. It doesn't even occur to Severus to lie to Sirius about where Bella has led him. "_You_ wouldn't know what that's like – never being wanted, never being chosen, never the first choice, anyway – always last, always invisible. You can't imagine - people _notice_ you."

"Even when I wish they wouldn't, Severus. And you don't know what _that's_ like. You don't change who you are just by putting on a mask. You have to change what you _believe, _what you _do_. Didn't you ever think there might be other ways?"

"There aren't any other ways. You don't understand. How could you?"

"No, actually, I understand quite a _lot_ about wanting to be someone else. And I understand that now you're a Death Eater - but you're still just 'Snivellus' in the end. When are you ever going to stop whining about it?"

"I believed her. I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe it all."

Sirius shakes his head, almost sadly. "But you didn't, did you? I doubt you ever _really_ believed a word. You bloody fool."

There's a certain cold, empty, still void at Snape's core as he makes his reply. What he says next, he believes, will probably kill one of them, either Black or himself, and right now, Snape is not at all sure that he much cares which.

"Bella was also wondering about something else," he says, evenly and quietly, gazing at Sirius in the same glazed way one might gaze at an oncoming avalanche. "She thought I might know, since I'm one of your classmates. And, in fact, I do know, although I haven't quite decided whether I'll tell her, yet."

Now Snape _is_ lying. He has, in fact, decided, only within the past few minutes, actually, that he will _never_ tell Bellatrix Black, or any other of his new, secret associates, what he knows. Not as long as he lives. But he neglects to inform Sirius, who, after all, has still had everything far too easy for far too long, even if his life is not _quite_ as perfect as Snape has always imagined.

And he _loathes_ Sirius for being the one to open his eyes to his own colossal stupidity at last.

"You repeated a name to her, I believe, in a weak moment?" Snape asks. "She would very much like to know to whom you were referring. She's asked me several times already. 'Moony' is the name she mentioned."

Snape cannot help but feel a certain doomed satisfaction to hear Sirius gasp quietly and to see him go even more bloodlessly white than he already is.

"And 'Moony'," Severus goes on. "Is the affectionate nickname you and all your absurd little Gryffindor friends use to refer to Remus Lupin."

Snape then folds his arms over his skinny chest and watches Sirius Black come unhinged.

The full moon is still rising.

Outside, under the moon's cool and tricky light, Sirius Black and Severus Snape are poised together in a precarious balance that could turn deadly at any passing moment.

In the Shrieking Shack, Remus Lupin is long gone and the Wolf that has taken his place throws himself against the doors and walls and attacks his own supernatural flesh because there is no other flesh to attack.

In the Dining Hall, James Potter and Peter Pettigrew are just finishing a subdued dinner without their mates and are rising from the table.

"Do you think Sirius might be back yet, James?" Peter asks timidly as they leave the table. "He didn't come in for dinner."

"I'm guessing he might not be too hungry tonight, Pete," James answers quietly. The stifling feeling of formless dread that has been troubling him all evening has not diminished as time has passed. If anything, it has grown worse.

"Well, maybe he's up in the tower by now, then?" Peter suggests.

He is desperately unnerved by the current disarray in all of his friends' normal habits and attitudes. He often finds it difficult to understand what the three cleverer, braver boys are thinking, or why any of them do the things they do. Because it is sometimes hard for him to keep up with them, he often relies on regular, expected patterns of behavior to show him the way. He also defines his own place in the group through familiarity, and this night, with all its disruption of the standard order of things, has left him not knowing exactly where he stands.

James is looking at Peter, and he smiles reassuringly. Unlike Peter, _he_ understands a good bit of his friends' private motivations, and he understands very well how upset Peter must be.

"Well, we'll just see where Sirius is, shall we, Pete?" he says, and takes the Marauders' Map out of his pocket. "Let's get out by the stairs for a bit of privacy and we'll have a look."

Once out of the Hall and into the corridor, they find a shadowy little alcove under one of the staircases to slip into. James awakens the magical Map with a tap of his wand and the usual incantation, and they both peer at its surface as the usual complex lines and figures and names appear.

They search for 'Sirius Black' among all the various souls that are moving about Hogwarts tonight, and James is the first to find him.

"Bloody hell!" he shouts, startling Peter badly. Peter stares at the parchment where James is pointing with his wand.

On the Map, 'Sirius Black' is standing toe to toe with 'Severus Snape'.

James goes cold thinking of just how murderous Sirius looked the last time James saw him tonight, of all the horrible pressures his much-loved but somewhat erratic friend has been enduring for weeks, and of how Snape and Sirius are like two unstable elements in a potion – elements that should never, _ever_ be mixed. He wonders, anxiously, how long the two of them have already been in conversation, and how long it will take him and Peter to get out onto the grounds to where they are.

"Right," he says to Peter. "We're going out there right now, Pete. The fastest way, get me?"

"We are? The fastest way?" Peter squeaks, uncomprehending.

James snorts impatiently. There are times when Petey drives him a bit mad. "Yes - the fastest way, you thick prat! As soon as we get outside - out by that garden with all the hawthorn bushes – we transform, see? I won't have time to wait for you - you just scamper after quick as you can, all right? Meet me _here_-" he stops to tap at the Map once more, so that Peter can see where they are going. "Right here on the path to the Forest. See it?"

"Oh – mmm – yes, I see it. Is – is everything all right, James?"

James is beginning to feel a bit frantic.

"No," he answers. "I really don't think it is."

Outside, in the night, the rising moon reaches its apogee.

Sirius is experiencing a very strange kind of dislocation. The past weeks have strained him past all his normal limits to begin with, Severus Snape has just provided the final shove, and Sirius is now operating well outside himself.

When he opens his mouth to talk to Snape, it's a fifty-fifty proposition whether Sirius will be speaking or Padfoot will be barking. Overwhelming stress has altered the generally stable separation between Sirius' two sets of world-views and mixed both together in a dangerously volatile combination. Boy and dog are making the decisions in concert now, and they are completely united in their awful fear and their _profound_ rage.

"You are _not_ going to say anything to _anyone_ about Remus Lupin," Sirius says to Snape. He _is_ using words, as it turns out, but he is snarling them through his teeth. "Not _anything_. Not now, not ever. Not _EVER_."

This, in fact, is Severus' intention precisely. But he still can't quite bring himself to admit that to Sirius, whom he now understands a good bit better than he ever has before, but who he also still loathes, perhaps more than ever.

And he still doesn't see just how far out of control Sirius is. It's entirely possible that he is choosing _not_ to see.

"Oh, yes? Doing a bit of Divination, then, Black?" Snape says. "And yet, you do have to admit, Lupin is a very interesting sort of fellow. So mysterious. So intriguing the way you and Potter and Pettigrew are always hovering around him in a pack, screening him from view, as it were."

"And you've been slithering around all year long trying to get a better look, haven't you, you back-stabbing bastard?" Sirius bites off. "Always looking for where the weak link is. Always looking for the right place to plunge in your little knife. And always after Remus because you don't quite have the bollocks to come after James or me. When _he's_ never done a single thing to offend your pathetic, _precious_ pride, not even once."

"He's the one who has a secret, though, Black. Some secret – something you're _all_ hiding. Lupin's a harmless enough milksop on his own, I'll concede – but he has terrible taste in friends. And it's already got him into serious trouble – hasn't it? Trusting in you? _I'm_ not the one who whispers about him when I'm having it off with my cousin, am I?"

Bellatrix Black would recognize the oddly detached, speculative look that comes into Sirius' eyes now. But Severus Snape does not.

"You're getting off the subject at hand, _Sevvie_. We're not talking about me or that -'harmless milksop's' - secrets just now. We're talking about _you_."

Somewhere inside Sirius, altogether too close to the surface, Padfoot is applying strictly canine methodology to the problem before him. There is an intruder in his yard, threatening his family. This he will not tolerate. Sirius may have a number of tiresomely complicated moral views that restrict his, and by extension, Padfoot's behavior, but Padfoot has gone into emergency mode and is throwing them all off. He is steadily and ruthlessly working out the most effective pack hunting strategy to destroy the enemy.

"No, we're talking about secrets, Black. Yours – and mine. But you and your friends have a deal too many secrets, in my opinion. How about this for a proposition: you trade one secret for another. You tell me what you're all hiding about Lupin, and I'll promise never to tell Bellatrix what _I_ know."

Sirius immediately understands this proposition of Snape's for exactly what it is. Severus will not want it generally known that he has sworn himself to Voldemort. Certainly not while he is still at Hogwarts, and especially not while Albus Dumbledore is the Headmaster. He may be questioning his own decisions in hindsight, but he cannot now go back and unmake them. Even from the far outer edges of control and reason which he is currently skirting, Sirius can momentarily admire Snape's cool calculation. Perhaps "Snivellus" really is a more worthy adversary than he or James have ever previously given him credit for. Credit where credit is due. It _is_ clever of him to try and use Remus as a bargaining chip.

But it is also _intolerable_. Sirius could almost kill him for it. He has only the thinnest layer of reservation left.

Padfoot has no reservations at all; he has already determined to kill the enemy if he can. The primal, savage geometry of the cooperative hunt is assembling itself rapidly in his doggish mind – feint, counter-feint, nip, fall back; decoy the prey toward where the deadliest hunter in the pack will be waiting.

And, ultimately, Padfoot and Sirius are merging. There is not a single magic in Severus' and Sirius' world that does not carry its own concomitant cost, not even the simplest. One cannot perform Animagus spells regularly without also experiencing some attendant merging of human and animal identity. Under extreme pressure, the line between what Sirius intends and what Padfoot intends has become so blurred as to be nearly nonexistent.

"I won't tell you what Remus' secret really is, Snape -" Sirius says; his voice has an almost dreamy quality. It is, perhaps, the very last thing he will say, purely as himself, tonight.

Then, he goes on; he and Padfoot and Bella and Remus and the Wolf and too many terrible weeks of rage and fear and shame and love and hate all speaking together.

"I'll never tell you that – whatever threats you may have coiling about in your greasy little head – all ready to spring. But I will tell you this. If you think you really have to know – if you really _must_ find out for yourself - there is a way."

"What way?" Severus asks, taking the bait down whole, as is his nature.

"Beneath the Whomping Willow, Severus, at the roots, you'll find an opening – an opening that leads into an underground passage."

"How thick do you think I am, Black? That tree would knock me senseless before I got within three feet of its roots."

"You're pretty much on the 'less' end of senseless already, Sevvie, as far as I'm concerned. But if you're the relentlessly persistent pest which, of course, we all know you are – you'll eventually find a certain knot on the trunk. Press it, and the Willow stops whomping, for a moment or two."

"I don't believe you. You're lying again."

"Am I? Then you'd be much better off not even trying it, wouldn't you? I think I'm going to say good night, now, Sevvie, pleasant as it's been. I think I've had about enough of you to last me a lifetime."

"Ah. At last we can agree on _something_, Black. Enough for two lifetimes."

Sirius turns his back on Snape and starts to walk away. It seems to him as though the ground under his feet is strangely distant as he walks, as though he is not fully connected to it, and it seems as if he and Severus have been out here in the moonlight together for centuries, ages, even eons. He thinks that although he'll take the well-known path back to the castle now, on this night, the path might not lead the way back at all. On this night, any path, even the most familiar, might easily lead one wildly astray.

"Some lifetimes are shorter than others," he says over his shoulder. "You may want to keep that in mind. Good night, Sevvie."

Severus answers abstractedly. He is already pondering all that Sirius has just said, and all that he has _not_ said. "Mm-hmm. Good night. Oh – one thing. Sirius?"

Sirius stops, surprised. He can't remember when, if ever, he has heard Severus Snape address him by his given name.

"Yes?" he says, turning back to face Snape. "One thing?"

Severus smiles, and actually laughs, a bit. Sirius is struck by the transformation just a little laughter works on his face. He looks almost … pleasant… when he smiles.

"_Sirius_. Haven't I _asked_ you not to call me 'Sevvie'?"

Sirius smiles too. "Why, so you have. Forgive me - so you have. And something you might want to ask _yourself_ is whether you actually have the right to uncover some secrets, just because you can. Something else you might want to ask yourself, given all you know now, is why I'd ever voluntarily tell you anything at all. Good night – Severus."

Overhead, the full moon, having reached and passed its zenith, is setting.

Sirius is slowly treading the path back to the castle, still locked in his nightmarish sense of disconnection. He is horribly tired now – exhausted and depressed – and he cannot remember a time in his life, ever, when he has not felt the earth under his feet as a presence and a source, as he does not now. He has never before felt so unutterably lost.

When he encounters a stag on the path, he is, for a moment, unable to recognize Prongs, his best friend and his reliable moral compass; instead he takes the stag as merely another surreal sight in an ever-spreading and possibly inescapable dreamscape.

Hands on his shoulders, then, and a familiar voice in his ears. Hands shaking him.

"Sirius? Sirius!"

"James?"

It _is_ James – shaking Sirius roughly to get his attention and looking desperately apprehensive.

Why? Sirius wonders; why does James look so frightened? It's something about Snape, isn't it? Severus Snape? He feels a strange sense of canine satisfaction as he remembers Snape, but he can't think why this should be.

"James?" Sirius asks. "What's happening, James? Do _you_ know?"

"Where's Snape, Sirius? You haven't...? You…what … what did you do with him?"

Sirius shakes his head vaguely. "Not quite sure. I may have killed him."

James sucks in his breath in a hiss and shakes Sirius harder.

"Sirius! Talk sense! Where's Snape?"

"Or maybe Padfoot did it," Sirius goes on, head snapping back and forth loosely to James' shaking. "Or he may have killed himself. We had a talk. It was really very… confusing."

James wants to smack the terrible, abstracted look out of his friend's eyes; he wants to shake him until he is recognizable as himself once more. But he doesn't. He doesn't because he knows that such methods will not work on Sirius. Blows and shoves don't work on Sirius. He takes his friend's face into his hands instead, a gentle touch, and holds him still so he can look right into his eyes.

"Sirius. Look at me. Right here. Look at me."

He blows a quick breath across Sirius face, and the other boy's eyes begin to focus on him. "Look at me, Sirius."

Sirius does. He does look at James, and after a few moments, he starts to really see him.

"James? Yes, James? What is it?"

"What happened to Snape, Sirius? Where is he? What did you do?"

With James' hands on his skin and James' voice in his ears and James' eyes boring into his, Sirius begins to feel more grounded. He can use the physical reality of James as a sort of anchor, and as he does, he begins to come back to himself in quicker and quicker stages. Reality reasserts itself.

"Oh …oh, Godric's blood, James. Oh, no. Oh, _fuck_. What'd I _do_?"

He now feels not merely grounded but heavy, weighted with dread. With James before him, still holding his face gently and forcing him to focus, Sirius, just as he did four weeks earlier on another awful night that apparently isn't over yet, tells James everything. His recital, just as it was before, is quick and complete. It doesn't take long.

"Daft," James croaks, aghast. "You're daft. Completely round the bend. C'mon."

"No," Sirius says, and plants his feet firmly in the ground. "Not like this. You go – Prongs is the fastest, you can get to the Willow before…before…before whatever. I'll catch up."

James nods quickly. Sirius is right. "All right. I'll need Paddy. In case … in case we have to control the Wolf."

Sirius shakes his head again. "Not Paddy. Not tonight. I can't trust me …him …we can't…just go. I'll catch up."

"But maybe Snape didn't … you told him not to …"

"Oh, he did. I'm sure he did. He's at least as daft as I am, tonight. Just _go_."

James does not waste any more time. He turns away from Sirius and has become a stag even before the turn is complete. Sirius can see his white tail flashing momentarily in the darkness before he bounds away.

Sirius' first instinct is to bound after Prongs, to offset his own mental disarray with the consolation of movement. But he forces himself to stand still, to put some order to all his chaotic thoughts and impressions, to actually _think_, perhaps for the very first time in weeks. He runs his shaking hands through his hair once, and then presses them both against the sides of his head, almost as though he has a killer headache.

"Sirius?"

It is Peter, trembling on the path and out of breath. "Sirius? Isn't James here? He said to meet him here. And where's Snape?"

Sirius turns to Peter and when he speaks to him; his voice is _almost_ even and controlled. There is hardly any tremor in it at all, and his hands have _almost_ stopped shaking.

"He's been and gone, Pete. Snape too. I'll be following in a minute. Now here's what I want _you_ to do-"

"But where'd he go? Why-"

"Shut up, Peter - please! Listen to me. Do as I tell you. Go get Dumbledore."

"Get the _Headmaster_?" Peter bleats, horrified. "Are you barmy? We'd all get detention for _life_! James'd _kill_ me!"

Sirius twists his hands together rather than twisting them round Peter's throat and somehow manages not to shake the smaller boy until his teeth rattle right out of his head. He is desperately aware of how quickly time is fleeting by. He stares into Peter's eyes and holds him still with nothing more than sheer force of will. He has to convince Peter to do as he says.

"Goddamnit, Pete … look …Peter … _please_. This is trouble. We can't handle it on our own anymore. People are going to get killed. We need _help_."

"Killed? Who's going to get killed-"

"You are, if you don't do what I say! And Severus Snape. And James. And Remus too, probably, all right? So can you _PLEASE_ stop arguing with me and just go – get – _Dumbledore_!"

"But – what'll I tell hi–"

Sirius fairly leaps on Peter and grabs his shoulders and physically turns him around toward the castle. He starts frog-marching Peter in the direction he wants him to go while gabbling urgently, right in his ear. "I sent Snape to the Willow and told him how to get in and James went to stop him and they are both going to be a midnight snack if the Wolf gets hold of them and we need some fucking _help_ here so get Dumbledore and tell him what I did or so help me I am gonna kick your fat arse all the way to the castle from here and-"

Pete wedges his feet into the ground and stops them both with a jerk while his face turns slightly green. "Willow? Snape? Wolf? _James_? Oh – no – oh, Sirius, you – you _didn't_!"

Sirius takes his hands off Peter and regards him evenly.

"I _did_. What in hell do you think I've been trying to tell you? Now are you going to go get the Headmaster or not?"

Peter gulps audibly. "Oh – my – God …" he moans.

"Right," Sirius says.

"Oh, _shite_," Peter says.

"Too right," Sirius confirms.

"You mad bastard," Peter says.

"You see the problem, then," Sirius says.

Peter shudders. "I'm off," he says, and dashes away toward the castle in an instant.

Sirius watches him momentarily to make sure he has a good start and doesn't trip over his own damn feet or something, and then he's off toward the Willow himself at a sprint, squeezing every bit of speed he can out of the long stride fortunate genetics have given him.

In the Shrieking Shack, the Wolf is bristling with endless rage and frustration and snaps at shadows and bites at himself and paces round and round, claws clicking wickedly against the wooden floor. He suddenly stops when a familiar scent comes wafting faintly into his prison, stops dead and stands still, quivering with lust as he raises his muzzle into the air and casts about for the source of the magnetic, metallic scent.

Blood. Human blood. He can smell it in the air. He can feel each separate molecule of fragrance coating the secret inner channels of his snout and resting like satin against his tongue and igniting an unquenchable blaze in his brain.

He locates the source in moments and _shrieks_, howling like a hurricane as he throws his full weight against the locked wooden door that leads down into the tunnel under the Willow.

Inside that tunnel, with only a small light at the tip of his wand to hold back some of the oozing blackness, Severus Snape hears the Wolf shrieking and instantly knows, through the pre-rational logic of nerve-endings and twisting guts, that he is hearing the voice of death itself. He instantly understands that he is the prey in a way that is _more_ than knowing. It is primal, it is totality. The Thing he hears is howling for blood. _His_ blood.

He is momentarily paralyzed, as stilled by terror as any small woodland creature suddenly facing death by tooth and nail has ever been.

I'm dead, he thinks. And if I _do_ somehow manage to get out of this alive - I am going to have that nancy prick Black's guts for garters – I swear it on Merlin's sainted drawers. I am going to _eat_ that cousin-fucking, inbred, snot-nosed sonofabitch's _heart_!

"Hullo, Snape," says James Potter from right behind him. "Let's run like hell, shall we?"

Snape is so startled he literally jumps by at least a foot and screams shrilly and clutches his chest where his heart feels as though it is trying to thump its way right out of his ribcage.

But at least his paralysis is broken. James grabs his free wrist and yanks him around toward the Willow end of the tunnel. The Wolf is howling and snarling and baying like all the Hounds of Hell in chorus at the other end, and then the sickening crack of wood splintering fills the darkness all around them like the crack of doom.

"You scream like a girl, Snivellus," James remarks, and then they are both running flat out for the end of the tunnel and the dubious safety of the open night beyond.

The tunnel seems to Severus to be elongating as they run its length, stretching out like black taffy ahead of them, and darkness as well as some howling collection of bloodlust and savagery is closing in behind. He runs faster than he has ever run before in his life and whenever he starts to slow, or to try to steal a glance behind them, Potter yanks him forward again and never lets up or loosens his death-grip on Severus' wrist. The baying and shrieking of whatever is behind them grows louder and a triumphant note of hellish eagerness begins to be audible in the Thing's voice and then Severus can hear the pounding of paws on earth, echoing and multiplying all through the tunnel and sounding as though it is right on their heels.

"…fuck …fuck … fuck…" Potter pants as he puts on yet another burst of speed.

"…bugger …oh, bugger … bugger …" Severus pants, matching Potter stride for stride and unable to stop twisting his neck and peering behind himself, much as he would _like_ to stop.

The mouth of the tunnel is drawing near at last and the final pale rays of the sinking moon silver the open night outside. Severus wonders, for a moment, why he has never noticed how beautiful moonlight really is before, and then when he glances back the way they have come, he can make out a dim, hulking shape in the tunnel behind them, a darker shadow amongst shadows, a horribly _familiar_ shape common to many, many traditional nightmares.

"… werewolf …Lupin…" Snape pants, somehow pulling another few degrees of speed out of his pumping legs and pounding feet. "… _werewolf_ ..?"

"…werewolf …" James confirms, also somehow finding a bit more speed somewhere inside himself and pulling Snape along after. "…don't … miss … much …do you ..?"

"… gah-hhhh …Potter …" Severus replies, somewhat senselessly.

"…Willow … up ahead …root, pull … freeze…out …up …press the knot again …starts whomping …"

Severus feels disproportionately relieved to hear that Potter does have some sort of an escape plan in mind. Not that, realistically, he thinks much of the proposed plan's efficacy. The ravening, howling version of Remus Lupin just behind them sounds like he could and _would_ eat the Whomping Willow whole in order to get his teeth on their bones.

"…bet … our …lives … on … a _tree_ …Potter …idiot …typical …"

"…want …to …stop and … brew up… a _potion_… Snivellus …wanker ..?"

"…_ugh_ …git …hate …moron …guuhhhh …"

They gain the mouth of the tunnel and James grabs at an unusually crooked root that hangs in the opening, slightly to the left, and gives it a good yank. Then both boys burst out of the tunnel in a flurry of flying clods of earth and many seasons' falls of dead willow leaves. Snape tumbles to a halt in the dirt of the steep hollow around the tunnel opening and the rich smell of earth fills his nose. Potter is already scrabbling frantically at the trunk of the tree with one hand while he covers the entrance to the tunnel with his wand. Snape raises himself to his knees, gasping for air, and starts to raise his own wand in a trembling hand when he is bowled over once again by a black, furry shape flying past and he hears a series of sharp, staccato barks.

He can hear Potter shouting "No – Sirius – don't!" but all he can see as he rights himself is Potter standing still as some dumb rock with his wand out and what looks like the tail end of a big, black mutt disappearing down into the blackness of the tunnel. What the hell is Potter on about?

"Potter!" he screeches. "Potter – press – the fucking – _knot_!"

Potter shakes himself as though he's just been startled out of a deep sleep and then presses the charmed knot on the trunk of the Willow. He drops to his belly immediately and crawls up and out of the hollow, pressing himself as flat against the ground as he can get. Snape too begins to squirm his way up the earthen walls around him as the boughs of the Willow overhead begin to creak and swish ominously. Neither boy stops crawling on his belly until they are both well out of the whomping range of the truculent tree.

When they have both gasped for air long and hard enough to catch their breaths a little, Snape glances at Potter, glasses askew, white as a sheet, and hair standing on end, lying in the dirt beside him.

"You just saved my life, Potter, you miserable, four-eyed fuck," Snape wheezes, and for some reason, all he really wants to do at this moment is laugh and laugh and laugh, if he could only find enough breath for it. "I'll get even with you for that if it's the last thing I do."

James is already laughing hysterically, not even trying to hold it in. He thumps Snape on the back companionably, just as though they have been the best of mates for years and years.

"You do that, Severus," he huffs and puffs in reply, still giggling madly. "You just go on ahead and do that. In fact, I'll expect nothing less."

Meanwhile, in the darkened tunnel, Padfoot and the balked, frustrated, _incensed_ Wolf are having a nonverbal discussion of the canine kind. The Wolf is snarling and drooling and baying at the top of his lungs as he still smells the luscious scent of blood right outside the tunnel and just past the familiar form of his pack-mate, who has chosen an _extremely_ inconvenient time to put in an appearance, to say the least. The Wolf does not really remember why, but he does remember that he is already angry with this particular pack-mate, and right now, the big black dog is _also_ standing between him and the veritable feast that the Wolf has only just missed securing by cold inches.

The Wolf flattens his ears as he stares the dog down, and he vocalizes a series of growls, rumbles and whirrs that mean, in effect: _Get your mangy arse out of my way at once or suffer the consequences._

The dog slowly lowers his tail and his ears and his eyes and whines briefly: _The prey is gone – you'll never get past the big tree-that-hits outside and even if you could I'm not getting out of your way anyway and so that's it then._

The Wolf's hackles bristle and he throws his head back and howls furiously: _You flea-bitten, kitten-chasing, tail-wagging cur – this is all somehow YOUR fault!_

Padfoot lowers himself to the ground, rolls over, goes belly-up and splays out his paws, and then whines once more: _Yes, you're right, it is. Here's my belly. Kill me if you must_.

The Wolf is very angry indeed with Padfoot, but he has no intention whatsoever of killing a pack-mate; it's a preposterous idea. He does, however, intend to give the black dog a beating he will _never_ forget and one which the Wolf is certain, in some vague way, that Paddy richly deserves.

The Wolf leaps on the dog, and in the course of administering the following extended lesson in canine etiquette to his pack-mate, although the Wolf growls and snarls and snaps alarmingly and shows his fangs often and frequently rakes Padfoot's thick black fur with his claws, he never once bites hard enough to break the dog's skin.

He soon has expended all his frustration and fury through the medium of a thoroughgoing thrashing, and finds that he is tired. The Wolf does not know how he knows it, but outside the tunnel, in the night, the moon has set, and the dawn is only an hour or two away. A time of change is coming soon, the Wolf feels it. He noses the now bedraggled Paddy once or twice, receives a faint chuff in response to assure him that all is well and no permanent damage is done, and after having a pee in several different corners of the space around them, the Wolf stalks off toward the Shack end of the tunnel.

Padfoot huffs softly and licks his paws for a few minutes, just until he has regained enough composure to raise his tired, beat-up body to a standing position. He looks off down the tunnel, in the direction where the Wolf has gone, and sniffs the air, peers into the darkness, sniffs again. Nothing. The Wolf has had enough jaw-grinding frustration for one night, it seems, and has gone back to the Shack to await the transformation to come.

Padfoot then limps to the mouth of the tunnel and listens for a moment. He can hear various voices just outside. He cannot make out what they are saying, not because he can't hear them well enough, but because he needs to think as Sirius thinks in order to understand the words.

He can, of course, understand the emotions _behind_ the words perfectly well; it is a kind of understanding all dogs share, and there are times when Padfoot understands what is really being said far more clearly than Sirius can. He knows the voices – he can hear his great friend James' wild and diminishing giggles interspersed with his despised enemy's rising tones.

Just the sound of Snape's voice makes Paddy's lips curl back from his teeth and he thinks of Snape's unique smell – a complex array of subtle individual scents that will mark Severus Snape's identity in Padfoot's memory forever. Padfoot can see and taste and hear very well, but he evaluates and judges almost entirely by scent. His utter condemnation of Snape is irrevocable and complete; he would _still_ kill this enemy if he could.

But not tonight. That time has passed; perhaps it will come round again on some other night. The dog coils down into his haunches, gathering his strength, and then leaps straight up into the black space above him and catches the crooked root in his teeth. He drops back to the earthen floor of the tunnel as the faintly rustling boughs of the Willow outside cease their movement and sigh gently into silence. The human voices Padfoot can hear are not interrupted in their flow; James and Snape have not noticed the Willow's stillness or the cessation of its low creaking.

Padfoot slinks through the mouth of the tunnel, crouched low to the ground, hidden in the gloom of the hollow, padding soft on his paws. He hears James laughing at something Snape has said, and uses the sound as cover as he jumps up out of the hollow and fades around to the far side of the great trunk of the Willow. He moves away from the tree and the voices, trotting from patch of shadow to dark shadow, as silent as a shadow himself, and as black. He makes for a group of standing stones not far away, near the path that leads to Hagrid's cabin, and lies down in their lee when he gets there.

The hunt is done, though the danger has not passed. Now the harsh and elegant simplicity of the hunt is not enough, now he must see shades of grey and consider all sides. The danger has not yet passed, but it has passed beyond Padfoot's scope and comprehension. Now he must think as Sirius – he must _be_ Sirius. A small stirring of air, a soft ruffling of fur, a spiraling eddy of black sparks, and he _is_ Sirius, lying in the shadow of the great stones where Padfoot used to be. Sirius rises to his feet, shaking the lingering traces of powerful magic out of his hair where they cling and crackle faintly, like charged motes of dust.

He begins to walk back to the Whomping Willow, and finds he must favor his right ankle, which feels as though it is sprained. He can taste blood, and after a brief inventory of his mouth, decides his nose must have been bleeding. Certainly it feels puffy and stuffed. Other little hurts and small injuries make themselves known as he trudges along. An infuriated Moony must have done a touch more damage then he'd originally reckoned.

Sirius looks into the night sky above him and the part of him that is still Padfoot sniffs the cool night air. All parts determine that the dawn is coming soon. He sighs. It has been a very long night, and an even longer day is likely to follow. He wishes there were a way he might persuade Dumbledore and Severus and various other interested parties to just let him sleep for a week or two before the inevitable post mortems of this ghastly night's doings begin.

At least, so far as he can tell, all the participants seem to have managed to get through the night alive. That, at least, is _something_.

Well, hasn't _this_ been one hell of a party, Sirius thinks with savage self-mockery. I'm just the perfect host. Mayhem, madness, and let's not be stingy with the mortal danger. Never a dull moment. Bella would be green with envy. Her and all her silly Samhain rubbish. Phfffft.

He continues to limp back toward the Willow.

Back in the shadow of the great tree, James and Severus have managed to collect themselves some, at least enough to get over their initial giddy astonishment at finding themselves still alive after all the evening's adventures.

As they have regained their breath and their wits, they have, of course, begun to argue.

"That bloody homicidal mate of yours needs to be locked up in a padded room at once, before he kills someone else. And I don't mean the werewolf," Snape is saying.

"What do you mean, 'someone else', Snivelly? _You're_ not dead just yet, are you?" James objects.

"No thanks to Black, _or_ his pet monster. You do know he has some sort of disgusting crush on that _thing_, don't you?"

"That _thing_ has a name. He's the fellow who sits two desks away from you in Potions. Whose notes from History of Magic go for around two Sickles a foot on the black market because he's the only student in the whole school who can stay awake long enough to take notes. Who tutors the first years in Defense and who sometimes saves parts of his breakfast to feed to the squid at lunch. Who's never said a single cross word to _you_ in six years of school."

"He looked decidedly cross tonight though, didn't he, Potter? I can't believe you maniacs have been hiding a Dark Creature on school grounds all this time! The sheer depth of the stupidity is mind-boggling – even for you and your friends."

"_One_ of my friends is the 'Dark Creature' you're talking about. And if you're thinking that now you'll go squealing your greasy head off about him to anyone who'll listen - if Sirius doesn't make you sorry you were ever born - I will!"

"I _knew_ we'd get down to threats eventually, Potter. That's all you know, isn't it? But then, you do keep what brains you have in your broomstick, don't you?"

"Snivellus, all you have to ask yourself is do you really want to fuck with _us_? Do you really think we'll be all pip pip and cheerio and _sporting_ about this? That we'd meet you on the field of honor for a nice, civil dueling practice - _one at a time_? We haven't been very nice to you, Snape, I'll admit it. But if you're thinking it can't get any worse than it's been, you had better think again."

"Strangely enough, I actually can't quite imagine anything much worse than trying to feed me to a _werewolf_!

"Sirius did that by _accident_, Snape. Believe it or not, he wasn't thinking clearly at the time. Imagine what he could come up with if he actually put his mind to it. And you wouldn't have just him to deal with."

"So, I keep quiet about what I saw tonight or you set your flesh-eating monster _and_ your murdering loony loose on me? Any other secret weapons in your little army you want to warn me about?"

"None that I want to warn you about. I'll keep a few in reserve. But there's also _me_, Snape, in case you were forgetting. And there are also a few facts that you need to get through your thick, antisocial skull. Sirius is my best friend. He tells me everything. _Everything_. Tell him something, and you've just told me too. There's not a word you said to him tonight that I haven't already heard. Understand? At this point, you have a few secrets of your own in the balance."

Snape flushes angrily at this reminder of the bizarre little heart-to-heart chat he and Black had earlier, and he thinks now of all the things he would much prefer he had not said then. He tries to control his temper enough to frame some sort of thinking reply to Potter, and finds it very hard going indeed.

Just as he opens his mouth to say _something_, whatever it might be, he is interrupted by a third voice, coming out of the night behind them and instantly recognizable.

"Among many ancient mages, a full moon was said to be an ill-omened time for the sharing of secrets," says Albus Dumbledore. He is standing on the path from the castle behind them, accompanied by a panting Peter Pettigrew, out of breath and clearly apprehensive. Peter's worried face splits into a relieved grin when he sees James, alive and apparently unhurt.

"Judging from what I know of tonight's events so far, it seems they may have been right," Dumbledore remarks further. "Good evening, Mr. Potter, Mr. Snape. How pleasant to find the both of you alive."

Snape groans in utter, uncontrollable disgust. "Salazar's Suds! Just when I thought this entire disaster could not possibly get any worse! What idiot sent for the _Headmaster_?"

"That would be me, Severus," Sirius answers quietly, hobbling out of the darkness to the right of tree. "I rather thought we could use a bit of help. Thanks, Pete, that was quick work. Hullo, James, glad you're not killed. Good evening, sir, I am _solely_ responsible for everything. It's all my …mmm …fault, and…and…"

Sirius finds that he is unable to complete his thought. He is suddenly extraordinarily light headed, his ankle feels like a hot, swelling balloon filled with bits of ground glass, and he has quite reached the end of his normally abundant supply of nervous energy. He sways momentarily, then simply folds up and lands with a small, dull thud on the ground.

"Er …" he says faintly. "I hope no one minds if I … sit down?"

Dumbledore, Pettigrew, Potter and Snape are all staring at him as though lobsters are crawling out of his ears. He can't think why for a moment, until Snape finally speaks.

"What the hell happened to _you_, Black? You look like a sack of ground meat!"

Sirius suddenly remembers his bloody nose and all the other bumps and bruises the angry Wolf must have left on his face and body, and is caught totally flat-footed. How can he possibly explain how he got so beat up without giving away the last secret he and his friends have managed to retain?

He can see James' eyes narrowing in nonplussed alarm as he tries to think of a credible excuse for his appearance, and then Pettigrew unexpectedly steps into the breach.

"Err …" says Peter. "I did it. When Sirius told me what he'd done and sent me for the Headmaster … I …guess I got a bit …_hot_ about it. _I_ roughed him up."

Snape snorts in disbelief and Dumbledore raises his eyebrows a bit. Peter is almost a foot shorter than Sirius and weighs maybe half of what he does. Sirius blushes in abject humiliation before he bites the bullet and confirms Peter's story.

"He's a fierce one, small as he is," Sirius says with the greatest reluctance. "We all try not to get on Pete's bad side."

"He's the terror of the Gryffindor Tower, you know," James adds, nodding vigorously. There is a suspicious twitching about the corners of his mouth as he says it, Sirius notes with a certain amount of annoyance.

Professor Dumbledore steps in. "Well, gentlemen, it appears we all have much to discuss. My office, I think. Mr. Black, are you able to make it back to the castle without assistance?"

"Yes, sir," Sirius answers, far more stoutly than he feels.

"And …Mr. Lupin?" Dumbledore asks him.

Sirius glances up at the sky for a moment, and surreptitiously sniffs the air once more. The night sky has gone a pale shade of grey in the east. "Sleeping it off in the Shack by now, I expect, sir," Sirius answers.

Severus Snape glances back and forth between Dumbledore and Sirius for a moment, a surprised look on his face.

"Very well, then," Dumbledore says. "Gentlemen, follow me. All of you."

He sets off toward the castle without glancing back, and the four boys trail after him, each in his own time, James and Peter first, Severus a bit more slowly, and Sirius, crippled by his injured ankle, last.

Snape allows himself to fall back a bit in order to speak to Sirius, hobbling along behind him.

"He knows," Severus says. "About Lupin, I mean."

"Of course he knows," Sirius answers irritably. "Did you think the Willow just grew on the grounds by accident? Most of the school staff knows, I'll be bound. Certainly Pomfrey does, even you could have guessed that. And McGonagall, too, I expect."

"But why on earth would he allow-"

"Oh, for God's sake, Severus! Open your eyes. The whole world doesn't think like you do. Or like my family does. Or like Voldemort does. Remus is a wizard. He deserved a chance to go to school, just like all the rest of us. Dumbledore gave him that chance, because he's a fair and good man, and because-"

"But it's madness! Lupin is _dangerous_, he's-"

"_And_ because that's what he does, Severus, gives people the chances no one else will. Lucky for you that he does that, wouldn't you say? Lucky for both of us. I expect you and I will both need a _lot_ of second chances today."

Snape stops walking and drops his hand on Sirius' shoulder, stopping him abruptly too. He stares, hard, right into Sirius' eyes.

"What are you going to tell him, Black? How much of what we talked about earlier are you going to repeat?"

"Worried your bargaining position isn't quite as strong as you thought it was, _Sevvie_? Now that you know Remus' secret isn't as much of a secret as you imagined? Get your hand off me."

Severus scowls, but drops his hand off Sirius' shoulder. "Well? What are you going to say to Dumbledore?"

Sirius sighs tiredly. "I'm going to tell him the truth. What else? I'm going to tell him everything. Quite frankly, I am sick to death of trying to sort it all out myself. Maybe Dumbledore can manage, it's clear enough I can't. And you know what, Severus? That's probably _your_ best bet too. But that's not really what you're asking, is it?"

"No, it isn't," Severus answers evenly.

"All right. Dumbledore knows about Remus – maybe a few others do as well. But not everyone does. And Bella doesn't know about 'Moony'. Agree to keep it that way, Snape, and I promise you, I'll never say a single word to Dumbledore about you. Not ever. I won't tell, if you won't. Satisfied?"

Snape searches Sirius' eyes, weighs the expression on his bruised face, judges the timbre of his voice. After a moment, he replies. "There's your mate, Potter…what about him?"

Sirius shakes his head. "He wont say anything if I ask him not to. And I will."

"But you can't be certain he won't-"

"Oh, shut it. You still don't really understand this stuff, do you? I _can_ be certain. He's my best friend. He'll do what I ask. Just as I would do for him. So let's stop niggling about and just settle it, all right? I'm tired. I don't want to debate with you all morning. Are we agreed?"

Severus Snape thinks, for a moment, of his own small circle of friends, cronies, really, mostly Slytherin house-mates. He contrasts what he knows of their loyalty to him with what he's learned of the loyalty Potter, Lupin, Black and Pettigrew have to one another. He thinks of how Potter risked his own life simply to undo the ill his friend Black had done, and he thinks now of the absolute faith Black has just expressed in Potter. He thinks of the infinite value of loyalty and love, and he _hates_ Sirius all the more.

"All right, then," he says, harshly. "Done. We're agreed."

He stalks off toward the castle quickly, trying to leave Sirius behind and out of sight as fast as he can.

But he is not quite fast enough. Sirius calls to him. "Severus?" Sirius stops and smiles to himself, a bit. His faintly amused smile looks rather disturbing on his bruised and bloodied face. "One thing …"

Snape recognizes this reference to their earlier conversations and scowls again, but he does stop for a moment. "Yes, _Sirius_? One thing?"

"Well, I don't really know why I should try to give you advice, but I will. I won't tell Dumbledore any of your secrets; we've agreed. But that doesn't mean that _you_ can't tell him."

Severus moves a step or two closer to Sirius without quite knowing that he's doing it.

"And why would I want to do that?" he asks, softly. There is no sneering in his voice at all; it is almost as though he wants Sirius to confirm what he himself already knows.

"You're already wishing that you hadn't made some of the choices you've made, aren't you? _I_ think you are, anyway. You're – you're not really a bad sort, Severus. You're a nasty, vindictive git with a stick up your bony arse, to be sure, and I personally couldn't be bothered to piss on you if you were on fire, but you're not _evil_. Not really, not yet. Why don't you see if you can loosen up that stiff neck of yours and ask for some help? Dumbledore does say that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it."

Snape regards Sirius intently. "What makes you think I _need_ any help, Black?" he asks.

Sirius shrugs. "It doesn't matter what _I_ think, Severus. The question is – don't _you_ think that you need some help?"

Snape does not answer but stands still, considering. After a time, Sirius slowly limps past him and away toward the castle. Snape doesn't stir until quite a bit later.


	11. Chapter IX, parts 5, 6, 7

_5._

Sirius never does find out what Severus Snape has decided to tell Albus Dumbledore, if anything. The Headmaster questions each of the boys separately, and sends each of them back to their dormitories afterwards, while the others wait in a separate room. He sees Peter, who knows the least, first. Snape is next, and he is closeted with Dumbledore for what seems a very long time to James and Sirius.

The two of them discuss the night's events in whispers as they wait for their respective turns to come. They first sort out what James can and cannot tell the Headmaster, and once that practical matter is resolved, James then tells his closest friend exactly what he thinks of his various recent activities. Although he uses any number of colorful and _extremely_ pejorative terms, he never once tells Sirius "I told you so."

Sirius appreciates this restraint; he has enough "I told you so" ricocheting busily around his own skull for the both of them. When Dumbledore calls James into his office for his own turn on the hot seat, Sirius impulsively grabs his best friend before he goes in, and crushes him in a quick hug.

"Thank heaven at least one of us isn't a nutter, Prongs. You know how much worse this would all have been without you. And I know too. Thank you."

James scans Sirius' bruised, troubled face. He smiles, slowly. "You're welcome. Friends don't let friends commit murder – I'm sure I read that somewhere in the Gryffindor handbook. And wait until you hear what Dumbledore has to say before you throw yourself off the roof of the Astronomy tower, all right, Paddy? He'll probably be a bit less harsh a judge than you will."

"I'm not really … cruel, you know," Sirius says, in a small voice. "Not always. Am I?"

James smiles gently once more. "No, you generally reserve the _really_ abominable treatment for yourself. Let someone else decide, this time, okay? I'll see you later."

Sirius waits for his time to come, alone, after that, and it seems like an eternity passes before he is called into the office.

He tells Albus Dumbledore everything, omitting only the secrets of others, that he has promised to keep. He is, by turns, ashamed, mortified, disgusted with himself, and absolutely amazed by the sheer idiocy of some of his decisions, but he doesn't leave anything out. By the time he is finished, he is covered in a thin, chill second skin of sweat, and he feels as though he's just dug a ditch straight across Europe. Dumbledore regards him gravely for a time, and the silence spins out between the two of them.

Eventually, Dumbledore speaks.

"Would you care for a cup of tea, Sirius?" he asks. Sirius feels as though he's slipped a few mental gears and he remembers the dreadful feeling of unreality that accompanied him on the path to the castle just a few hours earlier.

"Sir?" he asks, voice trembling with confusion and terrible fatigue.

"Tea. You look as though you could use a cup. Certainly I could. Just a moment."

Dumbledore rises from his desk and pulls a small silken rope in a nearby alcove of the office. A tray with a steaming pot of tea, china cups and a plate of biscuits appears on a deal table in the alcove a moment later, sent up from the kitchens, no doubt.

Dumbledore pours, and Sirius finds that the simple, homey rituals of cream and sugar and holding a warm cup in both hands allow him to collect himself much more effectively than he would have guessed they could. He nods gratefully to the Headmaster as Dumbledore resumes his chair behind his desk and sips at his cup, still holding Sirius in his gaze all the while.

"Well, then," Dumbledore says. "What am I to do with you? Am I to have you expelled and have your wand destroyed? Cast you out? Send you off somewhere where you can't do any more harm?"

"Perhaps you _should_, sir," Sirius replies quietly. He grasps his teacup tightly and looks Dumbledore in the eye. "That might be best."

Dumbledore sighs. "I see your doubts, Sirius. I share them. What do you feel right now? Which emotion most fills your heart?"

Sirius listens to himself for a moment, listens to the small, dark spaces inside him.

"Fear, sir," he answers. "I'm afraid."

"Yes. But not for yourself. _Of_ yourself. Isn't that so?"

"There's … there's so much about what happened – about the things I did – that I don't understand. But there's also quite a bit that …I'm afraid I might understand altogether too well. Do you … do you see what I mean?"

"I see that you have some adult choices to make. You are certainly no longer a child. I see that you are going to be a man very soon, Mr. Black"

"And I wouldn't want to be a bad one," Sirius says, and sighs tiredly. He looks into his teacup as he goes on. "My great-grandfather died in a private sanitarium, did you know that? The family hushed it up, of course, but _you_ might have heard about it. So did one of my aunts. My father sometimes raves in his sleep and my mother raves awake, night _and_ day. My little brother hexed one of the house-elves to burst into flame once, when he was six. I had him beat by two years; I set Narcissa's hair on fire at four. My cousin Bella …well, you've heard enough about _her_. I don't _want_ to do any more harm, but …you know, I didn't especially want to last night, so far as I can remember. I'm beginning to wonder how … how valid a_ny_ choice I make really is."

"Your blood, I agree, has conveyed some curses along with its gifts. And that, I am afraid, is most often the case. We are not, any of us, often born with gifts that have no cost. You are suggesting that perhaps it's best if I send you off to some remote cloister where you can't do harm? And where, Sirius, do you suppose that might be?"

"I …I don't know, sir."

Dumbledore smiles, a little. "The world can seem like a very big place, when we're young, but it really isn't. I can't send you outside the world, that is far beyond my power, whatever you might wish. No matter where you go, no matter where you'll _ever_ go, as long as you are in this world, you can _always_ do harm."

He stops and takes a sip of his tea. The smile has died from his lips when he next raises his eyes to Sirius.

"Nor can I somehow render you powerless and thus harmless forever, even if you wished it, even if I wished it. But I do not wish it. A war is coming. You yourself must know this, you've been touched by it already – bested, in fact, in your first battle. For make no mistake, Sirius, Voldemort has been your true adversary in this skirmish."

"But it was Bella who – and it was me that-"

"It doesn't matter. Bellatrix, Voldemort, poisonous deeds, poisonous thoughts, they are all _one_, in this conflict. This is how the Dark Lord, and those who serve him, attacks. He preys on the weaknesses of his victims and invites them to destroy _themselves_. You do have the potential to be a deadly enemy, young Black. I shall not lie to you in that regard. Your classmate, Mr. Snape, has a similar potential. I should much prefer that the both of you be _Voldemort's_ enemies, rather than mine, as I oppose him. Must I permit him to force me into a position where I must destroy two young lives in the pursuit of some cold ideal of justice? Thus reducing the number of opponents he himself must eventually face by two? Do your fears truly run that deep?"

"I don't speak for Severus," Sirius says, a bit tensely.

"No, indeed, you have deliberately failed to speak for him on several pertinent points this very morning. Some private arrangement between the two of you, no doubt. But you _can_ speak for yourself. Will being expelled and forbidden the practice of magic truly protect you and others from everything you fear in yourself? Can you even promise, truly promise, that if I did cast you to the wolves, as it were, you would never use magic again?"

Sirius thinks of the thousands of spells, jinxes, charms and curses that he has already cast in his relatively short life. He thinks of how _easy_ it had been to learn his first charm; of how it had seemed as if he'd known just how to do it all along, in exactly the same way that he knew how to breathe or swallow or blink his eyes. He thinks of Padfoot, and of how very close the black dog always is now, of how blurred the boundaries between himself and his _other_ self have become. He thinks of all the magic in the earth and the sky and the water and the air that he can always feel, humming endlessly, always just within reach. He can no more promise to give up magic than he can promise to give up air. It is as inextricably a part of him as his bones are.

"No," he admits to Dumbledore finally, voice cracking. "No, I can't promise that."

"No. So, that being the case, we must both find a way to have a bit of faith in you, I believe. You have not been a bad child, and I don't really think you will ever be a bad man. Most evil men have little ability to love. But you suffer from a surfeit of it, as the events just past amply demonstrate."

Sirius' eyes widen a touch in surprise. This idea is not something that has ever occurred to him, over the past weeks.

"It is true that I was thinking about - I've – I've been so frightened for -" he breathes, more to himself than to Dumbledore.

"For Mr. Lupin, yes. A pity your deep concern for him placed him in far greater danger than your cousin alone could ever have managed. This great capacity for love is something you also must learn to control, perhaps more than anything else in you. You do not yet see it as your primary weakness, and, indeed, it is your greatest strength. But love is an explosive substance, Mr. Black, the most explosive there is. And you are _steeped_ in it. You'll have to have a care where it leads you, in future."

Sirius nods, a bit grimly. He _will_ have to have a care. Not that Remus, by any sane standard, will do anything other than despise and detest him, once he finds out what Sirius has very nearly done to him. And perhaps that's for the best.

Dumbledore is still speaking to him. He tries to put aside the monstrous aching in his heart at the thought of his friend Remus enough to listen.

"I've known you since you were very small. Please trust me when I say you have _never_ been as strongly controlled by your own blood as you might believe. In truth, you are singularly difficult to control at all, by any force that I know of."

Dumbledore smiles again, and there is genuine fondness in it, despite the graveness of what he says next.

"But you expect to be judged, I imagine. Therefore, I'll render my judgment now. And you must render yours. Stay with us, then, Sirius. Turn your considerable power against Voldemort. Turn your considerable ability to love and your equally considerable ability to wreak havoc against him too. Will you do that? _Can_ you do that?"

Sirius stares into Dumbledore's eyes, trying, in his way, to see the thoughts behind them. He cannot see his future there, and he cannot see where this day will eventually lead. He sees only that it all comes down to choices, in the end. And so _many_ choices must be made blind.

"Sir," he says at last. "I'll try, sir."

"A fitting punishment, I think. A life sentence, in fact. But I can also deduct some points and give you some detentions if it will make you feel better, Mr. Black."

Sirius feels his face pulling in an odd way, and doesn't realize that he is grinning, it has been so long since anything at _all_ has struck him as funny. "It would certainly make Mr. Snape feel better, sir. I'm sorry to say that I rather think you ought to."

"Just as you wish, then. See Professor McGonagall this afternoon. And see Madame Pomfrey, as well, you look a fright. I would not have thought Mr. Pettigrew had it in him. Good day, Sirius. We'll talk about your future plans again in a few months."

_6._

Over the course of the next few hours, Sirius quite forgets that one of the last things the Headmaster told him to do was to have Madame Pomfrey take a look at him. He still has to deal with the judgment of Peter and of James, and he will eventually have to face Remus, whenever he recovers enough to leave the hospital wing. He and James and Peter are comparing notes on the shore of the lake late that morning when Severus Snape shows up to give them all a virulent dose of opinion, and James' only comment, when they see Snape approaching, is eloquent.

"You bloody wanker, Sirius. Thanks to you, now we all have to be _nice_ to the greasy git!"

Remus Lupin comes staggering out to the lake not long after, pale as death and swerving to and fro in his course towards them like a defective top. Sirius wishes he had the nerve to cast a quick Disillusionment charm on himself, since it is clear from Remus' expression, even at a distance, that _he_ is the target Remus most urgently seeks.

"How in _hell_ did he find out so soon?" Sirius asks the air in pointless aggravation. "He shouldn't even have been out of bed until tomorrow at least! This'll put him back in hospital for a week!"

"Dumbledore, I should think," James remarks evenly. "Brace yourself, mate. I promise not to let him kill you if it looks like things are getting out of hand."

"You're a true friend, Potter. You can have my History of Magic notes if anything goes wrong. And you won't let my family get their claws on my corpse, will you? No telling what they'll do with it." Sirius says, watching as Remus gets closer and closer.

Remus is on him a few moments later, and Sirius really can't remember very much after that at all. He recalls telling Pete and James to see if they can collect his teeth at one point, and he remembers Remus saying he is satisfied and will not be administering any further beatings in the foreseeable future, and he remembers being amazed and immensely grateful that Remus, rather miraculously, is actually willing to touch him, even if it _is_ only to pummel him into shreds. But he has been around the dark side of the moon and back, over the past twenty-four hours, and has also been beaten senseless twice, in two separate forms, and it is all a bit much, even for a young, healthy teenager. He doesn't ever, for the rest of his life, recall much of anything about his next two days in the hospital wing.

During that time, Peter and James fill Remus in on all that has happened, and attempt to answer all his questions. Remus, even from his own hospital bed, is not too exhausted to see that James, at least, is not answering _all_ his questions, even now, and from this he deduces that all the things James isn't telling him are probably not _his_ secrets at all. He stops asking while he considers things, over the next two days.

On the third day, Remus is about to be permitted to leave the hospital, and Sirius, he has heard, has finally returned to full consciousness, sometime during the night. James shows up early that morning, while Pete is away at breakfast, and stops for a quick visit with Remus.

He peeks around the privacy screen that is always put up during Remus' periodic visits to the hospital, and grins when he finds Remus awake.

"How are you feeling?" he asks as he slides into the chair beside Remus' bed. "Want a muffin? I nicked it out of the dining hall before I came down."

"Better, thanks. Madame Pomfrey says I can leave, a little later today." Remus takes the muffin and bites into it immediately. "Ta, James. I like blueberry. The food in here is swill, somehow. It's bit of a mystery, really, it all comes out of the same kitchen, doesn't it?"

"So it does…" James answers, glancing around. "Some sort of hospital food charm?"

"Mmph. Could be. Sirius is awake. Had you heard?"

"Er … yeah, Frank Longbottom mentioned, his cousin was in last night with a light concussion after the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff match. I'll… I'll drop by and see him in a bit."

Remus smiles. "Did you save a muffin or two for him?"

James can't help snickering, though he is clearly a bit nervous. "You know he hates muffins, Moony. He says they -"

"Look like toadstools. Yes, I know."

They both smile for a moment. James' smile fades first.

"Um … are _you_ going to …visit him before you leave? You know, just a quick 'hullo', maybe?" James asks.

"Maybe a just quick 'hullo, sorry I put your lights out for two straight days', then, James?"

"That's not what I meant. You know it isn't."

Remus sighs. "You can't protect him from everything, James. You really can _not_."

"You could break his heart, you know. It'd be easy, just now. Maybe you'd like to, I can certainly see why you might."

"But - don't. Don't do it, just because you can. That is what you're telling me, isn't it?"

"No. I'm _asking_ you. Please don't."

Remus gazes at James, steadily. When he speaks again, there is no anger or resentment in his voice at all; he desires information, only that. "Why not?"

Now it's James turn to sigh. "I'd tell you if I could. It's not that I don't want to."

"But there _are_ reasons? You can promise me that?"

"Sirius isn't _completely_ mad – not yet, anyway. Yes, of course there are reasons. This didn't just happen overnight."

Remus snorts. "No, Prongs, it certainly didn't. You and Sirius have been driving me round the twist for _weeks_. There were reasons for that too, or so I devoutly hope!"

"We may have gone a bit overboard, I'll admit," says James, grinning.

"The two of you are so much alike, in so many ways. But that asinine tendency to go overboard may be the one most striking similarity between you. You two are identical, in that respect. It's a wonder you've _both_ lived as long as you have."

"Well, that's what we need _you_ for, you condescending git. To keep us in check. It's certainly not your sparkling personality we admire."

Now Remus really laughs. Hard. "Oh – oh, no, I expect it isn't."

James smiles at him. "You do know that we love you, don't you, Moony? Both of us? We have finally gotten through to you on that?"

"I do make an effort to remind myself, from time to time. Just – just lately, though, it's been a bit difficult to remember. I _am_ trying, James. Really, I am."

James looks off toward the privacy screen, as though he could see through it and see Sirius, somewhere off on the far side of the wing. He looks back at Remus.

"I can't really tell you much of anything that could help. They're not my secrets. But I can tell you this. There was never a single moment, not one, through any of it, that he wasn't thinking _only_ of you."

Remus blinks. There is more to this statement, perhaps much more, than what he can immediately determine. There is more to it than just a few words. James is telling him something vastly important, even if he can't – quite – divine what it is.

Perhaps he'll have to ask Sirius what it is.

"Yes," Remus says to James. "Yes, I will."

"Yes? Yes, what?" James asks, a bit puzzled.

"Yes, I am going to visit him before I leave. I was in any case. You needn't have bribed me with blueberry muffins at all."

James relieved grin might light up an entire room. "Waste of a good muffin, then," he says. "And I was really hungry, too."

"I drive a hard bargain, Potter. Part of the Prefect credo. Will he murder you for having this little chat with me?"

"Not if he doesn't find out about it," James answers, standing up.

"Ah, yet another opportunity for future bargaining. Thanks for coming by, James."

"Thanks for …just … thanks, I guess. I'll see you in class?"

"I should be up and about in time for Potions," Remus says. His smile is a bit wry. "Simply wretched timing."

"I'll partner with you today, make sure you don't do anything too fatal. Pete will have to look for other quarter, for once. I owe you."

"No, you don't, not really. I love Sirius too. Even when it's hard to do."

James smiles and suddenly reaches out and messes up Remus' hair. Not that Remus had combed it yet, so early in the morning.

"He'll be glad to hear it. See you later, Moony."

Remus thinks about all that James has said long after he is gone.

7.

Finally, in the last stretch of the morning when the spring sunshine streams in through hospital windows at its prettiest slant, it is only Sirius and Remus.

Remus, as promised, has come to visit his friend before leaving the hospital wing and going to class. He pulls a chair away from one of the nearby, empty beds, and sets it down quietly beside Sirius' bed. Sirius is still dozing, and Remus doesn't want to wake him abruptly.

Of course he's still dozing, the lazy thing, Remus thinks. He never has been much of a morning person. And with that, almost as if he's been called by Remus' very thoughts on him, Sirius awakens and opens his eyes.

"Mmm…hullo, Moony," he croaks muzzily. "Nice surprise to see you. I thought you might not be waiting in line to visit me, considering."

His nose is swollen out of its proper shape and he has a spectacular black eye, and when he smiles at Remus, he is still a bit snaggle-toothed, as Remus can plainly see.

He somehow manages an almost mystically beautiful smile anyway.

How on earth does he _do_ that? Remus asks himself, and not for the first time. Is it just some little-known and rather pointless magical power that he has?

Sirius is an extraordinarily handsome young man, Remus has been aware of that, along with everyone else at Hogwarts, ever since he was an extraordinarily pretty little boy. It's just the way things are, and there are other boys at the school who are no less good looking, and there are especially lovely girls, as well. But sometimes, when Sirius smiles, he has a beauty that is more than the sum of its parts.

Is it just the way he looks? Remus thinks. Or is it, perhaps, in the way _I_ look at him? Or is it that he only smiles exactly like that for me?

"Strangely, Paddy," Remus says aloud. "There was no queue to get in to see you at all. I was able to get a seat without even making a reservation." He takes a moment to sit back in his chair and consider the exhibit before him, unconsciously tilting his head in an oddly wolf-like manner. "How do you feel?"

Sirius snorts, and then winces, since snorting seems to make his newly set nose feel like it's going to explode, and then, of course, he can't help laughing at the absurdity of it all.

"Brilliant! Feel great! Never better! Thank you _so_ much for asking, you blood-thirsty supernatural monster. Did you break my nose in the tunnel or by the lake?"

"I think it was in the tunnel, but I wouldn't swear to it before the Wizengamot. I did warn you not to cross paths with the Wolf that night. I can't help it if you never listen to a word I say."

"Oh, you were in a temper when you said that. I thought you'd come round."

Remus sighs, and turns his eyes upwards as if in heavenly complaint. "Foolish humans. You teach them and you teach them and they still won't learn _anything_."

Remus returns his gaze to his friend, and they both smile at one another in that mildly bemused way that they have always had.

"What a sketch you are, Sirius," Remus finally remarks.

"Ah. Well, so others have occasionally said. And not always in such laudably polite terms, for which, of course, I thank you." He very carefully pulls himself into a half-sitting position and stares at Remus for a moment.

"How much lasting damage are we looking at, here, Remus? Is this a good-bye visit? Because … I _would_ understand if it were."

Remus sighs a bit; he would have been content not to discuss this at all on such a pretty morning. But Sirius, of course, will want to know where they stand, and he never has been able to tolerate being kept waiting for long.

"There's a great deal that _I_ don't understand, Sirius. Why would you do something like this? I know there must have been reasons, but I still have no idea what they were. And I've asked you to tell me what was wrong once already, if you recall."

"Well, I'm tempted to say you've thumped me on the noggin once too often lately and I _don't_ actually recall, but I'd be lying."

"Then you'd be lying again. Can you at least stop doing _that_, at this juncture?"

"_Yes_," Sirius answers, quietly, emphatically. "Yes, I can, at least, stop lying to you. And I'm so sorry that I ever did in the first place – you must believe that, if nothing else."

"Sirius, I've never believed any of this was just some sort of stupid joke, if that's what you were afraid of. This whole fiasco had been brewing for weeks and weeks before Severus just happened to get in its orbit. Something went wrong with you about a month back. But I still don't know what it was."

Sirius looks very white, against his counterpane, Remus notices. His pale face in its dark halo of black hair looks drawn and fragile and tired, and there are hectic spots of color high up on his cheeks. Remus suddenly wishes he could smooth some of that haggardness away with his hands, and then he is terribly surprised to discover how _much_ his fingers ache to touch Sirius' white skin. He finds that he is staring at Sirius' mouth when next his friend speaks.

"I'd tell you what it was if you asked, you know," Sirius says, and his voice is so low it's almost inaudible. "If you ask me, I _will_ tell you. But I hope you won't ask me. Because there's not a single thing about this that I _ever_ want you to know, or to think about, or to remember. I don't particularly care to remember myself. So, you decide, Moony. Will you ask?"

Remus considers, once again, he belatedly realizes, staring at his best friend's mouth. The lower lip is split towards the right side, he notices. Sirius will have to avoid kisses and all acidic foods and beverages for another few days. He will have to avoid being kissed, at least for a little bit longer.

But not forever, Remus thinks, with a secret little inner trickle of happiness that surprises him yet again.

"Is this a one time offer?" he asks, trying to look extremely grave, but smiling anyway. He is beginning to think that he may understand now, at least to some small, breathless and astonishing degree, what James might have been trying to tell him earlier. "Or can I hold you to it, say, five years down the road?"

Sirius immediately understands the implication. Remus can see it in the way the color of his tired eyes light from a dark slate to the pale grey of dawn breaking in a single moment. There are all kinds of grey in this world, Remus thinks. And Sirius has every one of them in his eyes.

"You can hold me to it twenty years from now, if you like, Moony. There'll never be a time again, _ever_, when I won't answer your questions."

Remus feels an unaccountable chill to hear these words, and some part of him asks where they will be, where _any_ of them will be, twenty years from now. But Sirius is smiling again, split lip and all, in that way he saves only for Remus, and he has gone from merely handsome to supernally beautiful again, and no ghostly chill can stand against the warmth that Remus feels slowly opening inside him every time Sirius smiles for him this way.

"Very well, Paddy," Remus says. "Then I _won't_ ask."

Sirius shuts his eyes for a moment.

"Remus … I …_thank_ _you_," Sirius murmurs, as soft as a breath being taken, and as vital.

Remus' heart is at once unraveled and undone. He has no resistance to Sirius at all. One smile, one gentle murmur, and he falls to ruins. It would be funny if it wasn't so intensely frightening. He quickly rises to his feet.

"I'll have to be off, presently. Potions awaits."

Sirius opens his eyes and grins, this time in his more normal, far less otherworldly way.

"I'm sure they'd begin without you, if you'd only give them the chance."

"If I can stand it, so can they. You'll be all right? Anything you'd like me to bring you from dinner?"

"Yes, please, see if you can find some sherbet, will you? Lemon."

"Not lemon, Sirius. I advise against it in the strongest possible terms." And now Remus is staring at his mouth. Again.

"Coconut, then. What are you staring at?"

In answer, perhaps, Remus does something that absolutely astounds them both. He has never done anything remotely like it before, and he hasn't the faintest idea what on earth has possessed him now. He leans down over Sirius' bed until he is almost nose to nose with him, and then he kisses Sirius' least bruised cheek.

But it's more what he _says_, just before he does it, that keeps Sirius' blood racing for hours after Remus has gone, keeps him awake and smiling foolishly from time to time and examining and reexamining all the possible meanings, long into the day.

Just a warm gust of breath, ghosting over Sirius ear, just before the very first kiss Remus has ever bestowed on the friend he loves so dearly.

"I am _very_ sorry I split your lip, Paddy."

And then Remus is rising away from Sirius and gathering up his things briskly and there's a faint but ravishing blush on his skin and he smiles shyly just before he's gone, like a silent eddy of water.


	12. Chapter X

X.

Is it possible that _some_ feasts, in time, may begin to consume the feasters?

All of us have come to think of our _most_ preferred and coveted prisoner as a never-ending resource. A continuous banquet of light and shadow, joy and despair, love and hate. Of _life_ itself. No matter how much we take, how deeply we drink of all the life within him, there is always more. He has never even come close to being emptied, though we have emptied many others among our charges before.

But is a steady diet of Sirius' heart too rich a delicacy for our own peculiar constitutions?

We have never before contemplated such uncertainties. Never before has there been any occasion to. Yet another new thing in our domain, then, where novelty itself has previously been only the vaguest and most tantalizing of rumors.

Ten years now we have dined on this most desirable of prisoners – the premium commodity in our prison larder of repasts. And in this decade of feasting on him, novel experiences have been available for our taking with gratifying regularity. We have greedily fed on the clarity of his passions, the exquisite depths of his sorrows, the searing brightness of his joys, the adamantine _will_ of his constant resistance. We have become…fond of him. We have come to experience a sort of a bond. We, all of us, have come to expect to savor the rarest of novelties in every encounter.

We have come to _expect_. And, of late, we have come to wonder if expectation is truly that greatly removed from _need_.

And from a starting point of need, how far a journey would it then be to envy, or to discontent, or to an awareness of some…_lack_ …within ourselves? We are not constituted to experience pain or pleasure or hope within ourselves; our way has always been, rather, to consume these delicacies where we find them in others.

But can it be that some more rarefied dishes might carry an additional freight of infection along with all their rewards? The hidden poison of self-awareness, perhaps?

_Self_ itself is not an idea we are particularly familiar with, in truth. Identity has never before been a concept we would have applied to our own existence.

We will never be _alive_ in the unique way that Sirius is. He is nothing like us. We are nothing like him.

But then…

What _are_ we?

_Nothing_, our quick-tempered and ever-resistant pet would certainly say. _Nothing at all_.

Have we stuffed ourselves so full of _him_ for so long - that _we_, in our turn, have ceased to exist as ourselves?

Has a ten year long feast of Sirius reduced _us_ to nothing in the end?

And does it truly matter? Though there may be dangers; a certain toxic quality in all the life we've stolen from him to batten on ourselves, we can hardly turn away from the great allure of that shining life now, fatal to us though it may ultimately be.

It is Sirius, after all.

We have spent too many years at this feast together, we and our absorbing, endlessly persuasive guest.

It has been too long. We _cannot_ resist him.


	13. Chapter XI

XI.

Sirius is gazing out of his window again on a cool fall night and has a specific certainty resonating with perfect assurance in his head. It is an annual occurrence, this awareness. Tonight is October 31st, Sirius knows. It is Halloween.

It has been a very long time since he has had any idea what the _year_ it might be. It is 1992 and he has resided in Azkaban for eleven years, in actual fact, but so far as he knows, it might be twenty, or it might be five or forty or sixteen.

It is not the _year_ that matters, in any case. It is the date. Halloween. A bitter anniversary that Sirius has never stopped keeping, though he has long forgotten how to measure the passage of years. On this day, every year, he thinks long and hard on Peter Pettigrew, and on the many precious things that Peter has stolen from them all. Halloween and Samhain are the same thing for those of Sirius' ancient blood, and Sirius has never quite been able to completely expel the influence of that blood from his psyche. Fire and blood and sacrifice: there is still some small something in him that craves these blacker mysteries and crueler magics.

Sirius spends his day carefully considering Peter every year, and his thoughts have such a quality of savage devastation in them that perhaps Pettigrew, miles away and securely hidden in an incredibly clever disguise, might feel the distant touch of Sirius' virulent, unquenchable enmity, and shudder against a sudden chill in his blood.

The daylight hours of Halloween Sirius customarily dedicates to all the darkness that is in him and to all the wickedness that is in the world. But the evening he saves for Harry. In the darkest hours of Halloween, Sirius shifts his private yearly ritual to the consideration of Harry, his own godson, and the son of a murdered father whom Sirius still loves with all that is left of his heart.

When Sirius thinks of Harry, he sees in his mind's eye a dark-haired toddler, a slightly pudgy baby with solemn green eyes, quick hands, and a fine, questing spirit. He does know that years have passed since this mental image was current, even if he can't say exactly how many years out of date it might be. Harry will no longer be the baby Sirius remembers, but a child grown now, or even, quite possibly, a young man.

He will have come to Hogwarts himself by now, Sirius is certain. Sirius still believes in the abilities of Albus Dumbledore, regardless of the terrible errors in judgment that Dumbledore has been guilty of in regard to _him_. Albus will have protected Harry; kept him safe; made certain he will have been gently guided toward the life-paths that are his birthright. Sirius still trusts Albus enough to be certain of all this.

He _hopes_ Harry will have been happy too, over all the years that Sirius has been unable to look out for him. He hopes that Harry has had many occasions to laugh, and has had good friends, and has sometimes made discoveries wonderful enough to stagger his naturally questing mind with joy. These things too, Sirius still believes, are the normal and attainable parts of any proper human life. He trusts that Dumbledore will have insured Harry's safety, but he is not as certain the old and heavily burdened wizard can be trusted to have a care for Harry's happiness as well. He is not quite positive that Dumbledore could ever learn to consider Harry's happiness as vital a priority as his survival.

But Sirius is not in a position to do more than hope for the happiness of his godson. And, in fact, he knows that the happiness of loved ones can never be completely assured, no matter how deeply one might love them. He has too often tried and failed in such quests himself.

So he does what he can. He imagines Harry at various ages, and sends out every strange and incorporeal tendril of _long_ _sight_ that is in him toward the place where he imagines Harry must be: Hogwarts. And in that mental milieu, on Halloween evenings, Sirius opens all his inner channels and tries to _see_ Harry – attempts to use the intuitive senses he has always had to watch over the godson that he once vowed to love and protect.

Over the past eleven years, now and then, disconnected images have indeed come to him. He has seen a Snitch zooming on an updraft on a sunny day. He has seen a tall boy with red hair and he has seen, much to his bafflement, a three-headed dog. He thinks there is a girl who, just as Remus Lupin once did, always carries too many books to class and bends under the weight of her book bag. He has seen Hagrid, not the way Sirius himself remembers the huge and kindly gamekeeper, but older, with more grey in his great beard and in his hair. He has seen a comfortable and familiar common room, and he suspects, with great delight and glee, that Harry may be a Gryffindor.

Over the years, during the daylight hours of Halloween when Sirius is observing his self-imposed annual celebrations and consumes himself in a dark fire of hatred and the iron-edged desire for vengeance, the dementors have learned to gather eagerly, inside and outside his cell, like bees at a hive. This is one black and compelling feast that they cannot ever bring themselves to miss.

But when the sun goes down and Sirius shifts the direction of his rituals back toward love, as the years have passed, approaching him then has become another matter entirely for his jailers. During these times, he seems to grow and swell uncontrollably in their consciousness, and he acquires a bright psychic shadow that, at first, made them uneasy, and now flatly frightens them. He is more _there_ at these yearly occasions, and yet, at the same time, he is far more _remote_. As a group, observing their favorite year after year, the dementors have slowly arrived at a suspicion that their human charges may possess unknown parts, unquantifiable aspects that can neither be heard nor touched nor consumed, and that can never be imprisoned. On Halloween nights, there are parts of Sirius that move far outside the walls of the prison in which he resides.

On _this_ Halloween night, 1992, Sirius calmly gazes out his window at a half moon gleaming in the velvety blackness of a clear autumn night and casts out to _touch_ Harry, in the only way he still can. He has learned to be patient when he performs this last half-magic, and he will be at his window for many hours more, unmoving, not quite _there_.

Now and then, it seems to the dementors gathered around outside his barred walls, all of them swaying gently to and fro, that the solid and familiar components of the prisoner in their custody blur and grow faint. All of them would very much like to enter the cell and speak to their prisoner, perhaps touch him, assure themselves that he really is exactly where they left him during the day, before the night fell on this Halloween. But none of them do it – not one enters the cell.

Not one of them dares to go in.


	14. Chapter XII, parts 1 and 2

XII.

_1._

_Bones kinking, twisting, cracking, lengthening and shortening, taking new angles. Internal organs compressing, altering, moving space by grudging space to new locations within. Pounding of the heart in transition, one beat, two, another and another tortured beat, the blood spreading a dire message of cursed modification to every tissue of the body with each infected pulse._

_Beat … beat… Listen and remember…focus…beat…_

_Muscles tearing loose from their accustomed moorings and blood vessels snaking out toward changed paths. Skin in flux, burning white-hot in the fire of transformation. Sweat bursting from every pore and the fine facial bones of the skull shattering and then reforming, changed._

_I always wonder if this time it will just kill me._

_Beat…beat… _

_But it never does. I've survived every time and I will again. And I am still _me

_And you are still _you_. Can you hear me? Can you? Speak to me._

_You can, you know. This is only pain. There is a life beyond it. Go around. Follow me. _

_Beat…beat…beat…_

"Can he do it?" Alastor Moody asks Albus Dumbledore. "Can he really? I've never heard of this technique before."

They are standing in a hired room above the bar at the Hogs Head Inn, an establishment where Dumbledore has certain connections that help him ensure secrecy for such meetings as this. The room is small and drafty, squalid and dark, but it is quiet, private, and serves their purpose. A single candlestick burns at the side of the one bed in the room, and casts shifting shadows over the broken form that lies in this bed. Remus Lupin sits in a wooden chair at the bedside, leaning forward toward the man in the bed, one hand laid lightly over the pulse-point at the man's throat. The light from the candle does not quite reach Lupin's face; most of it is cast into deep shadow. What little Moody and Dumbledore can see of his expression is utterly blank, a perfect cipher. His eyes, half hooded, glitter vacantly at intervals in the flickering candlelight.

"Only because, so far as I can determine, it is unique to him, Alastor. How many skilled wizards do you know who are also werewolves? And how many of those are Remus Lupin?"

"Then it's an outgrowth of a Dark Art, in essence. No wonder you've kept it so secret."

"We have kept it secret to save the lives of other victims, Alastor. Voldemort will not so carelessly discard those he has harmed alive should he ever learn that we have some hope of communicating with them. Sometimes, at least. And this is no Dark Art. It is a mercy and it is fueled by Lupin's compassion as well as his essential humanity. His learned ability to retain his identity under the worst and most prolonged duress. It is also fueled by his pain, which, as I understand it, he uses as the central tool of his technique. He has found a way to turn his own affliction toward the common good, and every session like this costs him much. I would not have you insult him."

"No insult intended," Moody replies brusquely. "Heaven knows the Ministry itself is not too finicky to use the Dark Arts here and there, these days. It's getting damned difficult to tell the Death Eaters from the Aurors, anymore. Besides, can Lupin even hear us right now?"

"Ask him, once he's finished with Rosier. I imagine he'll have a few questions for you, too. As do I."

Moody flushes a dull brick red. The color in his skin does not touch the scars on his face, which stand out like pale brands.

"I didn't even know we'd captured Rosier until three hours ago and I can't tell you who's been at him for the simple reason that I don't know," he says. "Not yet, at any rate, and not that it matters, in the larger scheme of things. The Ministry is breaking down, Albus. We've both known this before tonight. And Unforgivables have been used in interrogations before now."

"Is there anything that _isn't_ breaking down in this conflict? Will there be anything left whole at all, when this war is over? Yet I've never had to ask Remus to attempt to reacha mangled Death Eater before. He's offered what succor he can only to our own people in the past. Evil is evil, regardless of who commits it, or to what purpose. Oh, yes. He'll have questions for _you, _Alastor."

"And I'll answer them as best I can. I'm prepared to do that. I only want _my_ questions answered. Why have so many of our prisoners begun to suddenly drop dead for no apparent reason, over these past few months? Before they can be questioned – before-"

"Before some misguided members of our own side can attempt wrench the information out of them by force? As they have clearly done with Rosier here?"

"I don't yet know _who's_ done this to him. Whoever used the _Cruciatus - _that could have been our own people, I'm admitting it's possible, even likely. The other things? To be quite honest, all that looks more like filthy Death Eater work to me." Moody's runneled face screws itself into a stark grimace of distaste. "I'm fairly certain it wasn't Aurors that crushed his hands or pulled his left eye out. We're not _that_ far gone. Yet."

"Yet it's the _Cruciatus_ that has rendered him incapable of any normal communication, is it not so? The effects of the _curse_ are what Lupin is attempting to bypass, not the physical injuries, grievous though they are." Dumbledore sighs deeply, and runs a weathered hand across his brow; Moody notices for the first time how terribly aged he looks. Then Dumbledore shakes his head.

"How, Alastor, can we hope to defeat Voldemort if we _are_ Voldemort?"

Moody stares at Dumbledore for a moment, his eyes filled with a weary cynicism. He shakes his own head and utters a sharp snort of laughter.

"Ah, Albus, what a credit you are to your old school house. Blindly optimistic right to the bitter end. _How can we hope to defeat Voldemort at all_?"

The light in Dumbledore's blue eyes as he answers is less of a twinkle and more of a hard shine; it is not at all comforting or reassuring. "There is _always_ hope, Alastor. Never think otherwise. Hope is the stony outcropping on which all our hearts eternally snag."

"Snag and dash to bits, more often than not," Moody agrees grimly. "But you're right, of course, Albus, as you so often are. Why else would I have brought Rosier to you if I hadn't _hoped_ that Lupin might … be able to question him?"

"And mercy for a young and dying man formed no part of your hopes? You had not hoped, in part, that his passing might be eased?"

Moody sighs, watching Lupin's still and silent form at Evan Rosier's side. Lupin's posture, for some reason, reminds him of that of a chaplain's, performing final rites for the mortally ill.

"I have no more taste for blood, it's true," Moody admits. "If I ever had any to begin with."

Both men fall silent and turn their attention back to the candlelit tableau at the bed. Death Eater and Order member side by side, engaged in one last magical ritual, united beyond enmity, or so Moody and Dumbledore hope, by the universal human condition of mortality.

_Beat…beat…_

_Rosier? Evan Rosier? Listen and remember. Follow me._

_Beat…_

_Who? How …where …where are we?_

_The space beyond, I think we might call it. You've heard of the 'land beyond the forest'? This, in a way, is the land beyond the flesh. Beyond all the pains of the body. Here, no more harm can befall you._

_No harm. I'm safe here?_

_Yes. Quite safe. The beating of your heart is slowing. Can you hear it? You are approaching the greatest safety any of us will ever know. Beforehand, you can rest here, for a time._

_Rest? Am I dying, then?_

_Yes, Evan. You are. _

_Beat …beat…_

_Oh. Oh, yes, I hear it slowing down. Not so bad, actually, is it? I needn't have made such a _fuss_ over it. Could have saved myself a lot of bother if I'd known._

_This…'bother' you speak of. Can you tell me who has hurt you so badly?_

_Everyone, I think. I'd refused, you know. We were supposed to kill Regulus, and I-_

_Regulus _Black

_Did you know him?_

_I…yes, slightly. I know his brother better._

_Sirius? Oh, yes, the nutter – the blood-traitor. But I didn't want to kill Reggie. I'd gone to school with him; he'd been one of my mates. I asked not to be included in that mission. They sent someone else after all, and he wound up just as dead. And I wound up being punished for 'softness'._

_Who …punished you?_

_I don't know. Three of them, and they kept their masks on. When they were done, they left me for dead. Or for the Aurors to pick up._

_And then you _were_ found? By Aurors?_

_Yes. And that was bad too, because they wanted to know …they wanted …well, I don't actually recall what all they wanted to know, just now. Funny. It seemed so important at the time. _

_You were questioned? At the Ministry? _

_They used the _Cruciatus_ on me. Hardly a surprise; we'd been told they'd begun to do that whenever they took one of us alive. I should have used the _Nihiliatus, _but I …I just couldn't. _

Nihiliatus_? What's that?_

_The Suicide Curse. A variant of the Killing Curse? I've heard He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named developed it himself. I don't know about that, but it's a fairly new curse. We've all been taught how to cast it, just over the last six months, in the event we were captured. It's painless – quick and clean – but I …I just didn't want-_

_This _Nihiliatus_. It can be performed without a wand?_

_Oh yes. It'd have to be, wouldn't it? Captured Death Eaters aren't allowed to keep their wands, are they? _

_What's the focusing agent, then? How does it work?_

_Pain. Pain is the wand. You recall the greatest physical pain you've ever known. You recreate it – a perfect sense memory. _

_But that would be difficult. The human mind is not structured to recall the physical sensation of pain._

_But it can be done. You've used the same method to bring us both here, haven't you?_

_Yes, but I …I am something of an expert in regard to pain._

_Nevertheless, it can be learned. But you are right, that _is_ the hardest part of it, learning to produce the sense memory. Once that's done, the rest is easy._

_What is the rest?_

_The incantation. '_Nihilium_' and then-_

_You must pronounce the incantation? Clearly?_

_Not necessarily. As long as you yourself can hear it in your mind's ear, it provides the needed effect. You can whisper it, mumble it. Whatever._

_And then? What else?_

_You perform the hand movements as you make the invocation, as you imagine the end of all pain. You point. Your temple, with one finger, then your chest, then your eyes, with the fingers forked. Head, chest, eyes. Brain, heart, soul. You can sketch the movements with your fingers if your hands have been secured. Brain, heart, soul. If it's performed properly, death is instantaneous. Like the Avada Kedavra. _

_Beat…beat…beat…_

_It's hideous. How can you all have consented to learn this deadly thing?_

_Our Lord wished to save us needless suffering. It was his gift to his servants._

_So his gift to you was death. How appropriate. Why didn't you use it, then?_

_I …I just couldn't. I'm only twenty-one years old. I don't… didn't…want to die. Can you understand that?_

_Beat…beat…_

_Yes, Evan. I can understand._

_Yes. You're young too, aren't you? I know you, I think. Lupin, isn't it? You were at Hogwarts, a year ahead of me. I remember you. _

_And I remember you, Evan. You used to like numbers and signs, didn't you? You were vice-president of the Arithmancy Club in fourth year. _

_Ah, yes, I was. That's a long time ago now, isn't it?_

_A world away, it sometimes seems. And yet not so very long ago in years. I do understand, you know. You and I are not so terribly far apart._

_Silly of me, really. I'm dying anyway._

_Yes. But not in pain. Not anymore. And not alone. _

_Yes. Thank you. Not alone. And it's not so bad. Not like I thought it was going to be. You'll stay with me though, won't you? I'm…I'm still…a bit frightened._

_Oh, yes. I'll stay with you. And it's all right, you'll see. I've been here, with others, before. It won't take long, and it won't hurt, dying won't. It's easy._

_Yes. I think it is. Not at all difficult. One wonders, of course, what comes after, though …_

_I don't know about that, Evan. You'll know a great deal more than I, shortly. But I _think_ it might just be rest. Like the way that you feel after a long, hard day of work is over and you know all your tasks are done. Don't you imagine it could be like that?_

_Yes …yes, I suppose. That would be …I think that would be nice, if it was like that. I could do that. Like knocking off the job. I'm so _tired_ of this war, anyway. _

_So am I. So are we all, I think. _

_It's stupid. _

_Yes._

_What got into us? Ah, well, never mind. What - what should I do now?_

_Just wait. I'm right here with you. Not much longer, I promise. _

_No. Not much. You're right. I can hear it – the way my heart is slowing down. Only a beat or two more, now, I think. _

_Yes. We'll listen together. Just a bit more._

_Well, good-bye, then, Lupin. Thank you. You're not a bad sort, really. _

_Nor are you, Evan. Not now. Good-bye. Safe journey._

_Beat…beat…beat…_

_Beat …beat…_

_Beat…_

_Beat._

_2._

"He's dead," says Remus Lupin, slowly raising his head.

His face looks pale and gray and the shifty light of the candle picks out the gaunt hollows around his eyes and the lines around his mouth.

Dumbledore comes swiftly to his side and clasps his shoulder, staring into his face.

"Remus. Are you all right?"

"No. May I have something to drink?"

Moody joins them quickly and offers Remus his hip flask. "Here you are, Lupin. Old Ogden's. Take all you like."

Remus upends the flask and swallows a hefty draught. He shudders afterward.

"Disgusting," he says softly, voice roughened. "How can you stand to drink this swill, Moody?"

"An acquired taste, I expect. But it'll do in a pinch. Were you able to learn anything? Did he tell you anything?"

"All in time, Alastor," Dumbledore interjects. "Give him a moment. Remus, come away from the bed now. Come along, my boy, up you get."

He helps Remus get to his feet and supports him with an arm around his shoulders as he leads him toward a table and chairs in a far corner of the room. Remus sinks into one of the chairs once he gets there and forces down another gulp of firewhiskey. Moody pulls out another of the chairs and sits across the table from Remus, watching him intently. Dumbledore keeps his hands on Remus until he is certain he won't slide out of his seat in his fatigue, and then takes the last chair beside him. Remus scrubs his hands across his face, shaking slightly.

"It's awful, isn't it, what you must do to accomplish this," Dumbledore says to Remus. "How I regret asking you to do it. I regret it every time. It must be terrible."

Remus somehow manages a wry smile.

"_I_ was the fool who developed the technique in the first place, wasn't I? I'm the one who first came to you and asked you to let me try it. Here, Moody, here's your flask. Thanks."

"It's nothing, laddie," Moody says, a bit gruffly. "I only wish I could offer more than grog."

Remus glances at him sharply, his eyes bright in his slightly grayed face. "You can. You can offer an explanation. Rosier was questioned by Aurors at the Ministry. He was _Crucioed_ until his mind broke, _after_ he received the other injuries. When did you people start training your agents to use Unforgivables? And who allowed their use on a badly injured, dying man?"

Moody bows his head for a moment, making a show of accepting Lupin's implied rebuke. The he looks up and faces Lupin's intent gaze without flinching.

"Well, I suppose you could say ever since Barty Crouch began to suspect that the tide is turning against us. That Voldemort is winning."

"It's appalling," Remus says flatly.

"So it is. But what would you have? The Death Eaters themselves do as much, and worse. If I'm not mistaken, it was the boy's own allies who tore him to pieces before we ever got to him, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Remus confirms quietly.

"Well? Did he tell you who they were?"

"He didn't know. They remained masked, and he apparently was not familiar enough with his attackers to recognize their voices or mannerisms. It was a disciplinary action, he'd-"

"It is as we thought then," Dumbledore interjects. "Voldemort keeps his organization mostly in the dark in regard to one another. No one Death Eater knows the identity of many of the others."

"Yes," Moody says. "This is confirmation of that. You say it had been a disciplinary action, Lupin?"

"Yes. He'd evidently been one of those ordered to murder Regulus Black. He'd refused that duty, since the two of them had been …they'd been chums at school."

"Did you learn who did commit the murder, then?" Moody asks. "Sirius might like to know, after all."

"Do you really think so?" Remus replies, eyeing Moody coldly. "Do you honestly think it would help or comfort Sirius in any way to know who murdered his only brother? I didn't ask."

"Well, but, he might-" Moody starts to argue.

"Please, Alastor," Dumbledore interrupts. "Let us take it as a given that Remus here knows Sirius a bit better than we do, at least in this. And this is a side issue after all, isn't it? What else was Rosier able to tell you, Remus?"

Remus heaves a shallow sigh and clasps his shaking hands before him. "He was set upon by three Death Eaters whom he didn't know. They abused him, tortured him, sent up the Dark Mark, I assume, and then left him out in the open, either to die or to be caught by the Ministry. Either way, they clearly expected his outcome to be … unpleasant."

He shudders, and for a moment seems to be lost in the memory of the pain that he found in Evan Rosier's mind. Then Dumbledore and Moody are suddenly and forcefully aware that he is back. He fixes Moody with an icy stare.

"And his death _was_ horrible, wasn't it? Aurors picked him up, and he was interrogated. With extreme force, it seems. Eventually he passed beyond the ability to answer any questions put to him. Which leads me to ask a question of my own, Moody. Why, given that Rosier was dying and no longer able to provide any information at all, did you decide to bring him to Albus? To me? What prompted this decision? It can't have been easy to spirit a prisoner out of the Ministry, after all. What did you hope to learn?"

"All right," Moody replies, stolidly. "All right, Lupin. You seem to have guessed in any case. I wanted to know why he was still alive, despite the treatment he'd already received." He casts a glance at Dumbledore, who nods his consent.

"Over the past few months," Moody continues. "Many of the Death Eaters we've taken alive have simply died before they could be questioned. Just… _died_. With or without 'extreme force', as you put it. No marks, no cause of death, no reason that we could see. But Rosier had suffered horror after horror, and he was the first in months who had _not_ just died."

"He didn't want to die," Remus says softly, almost as though he is speaking to himself. "He was only twenty-one. I knew him at school myself, slightly. He was very young. He wanted to live."

Dumbledore and Moody glance at one another across the table. Dumbledore raises his eyebrows and Moody makes a minute nod to him. Dumbledore turns toward Remus.

"Remus?" Dumbledore asks quietly. "Are you saying that Rosier could have _chosen_ death, had he wished? That he had some means of self-destruction already in place?"

"They call it the _Nihiliatus_," Remus answers. "A little something Voldemort whipped up, apparently - a variant, Rosier thought, of the _Avada_ _Kedavra_. His 'gift' to his followers. A safeguard against coercion for them, additional security for him. It's a suicide curse."

Moody's dark, beady eyes widen in triumph and his fist crashes against the table.

"I knew it!" he growls. "I suspected it! The bloody coward! Terrified of dying himself, but couldn't be happier than to hide behind his servants, teach them how to bow out when the going gets rough. And every one of the damned fools obediently doing their precious master's wishes!"

"Not quite every one," says Remus sadly, beneath his breath.

Dumbledore nods briefly to Moody. "Voldemort has always had an …incomplete understanding of death. He is not, as you see, Alastor, completely devoid of weaknesses."

"Then we need to exploit it." He wheels on Remus. "So how does it work, Lupin?" Moody asks, excited. "It'd have to be wandless, yes? Is there a spoken incantation? Special motions? Any other details? Did Rosier tell you?"

"Yes," Remus says slowly, again, almost as if he is musing to himself. "Yes, he did. He told me everything."

Dumbledore has begun to stare at Remus intently, but Moody does not notice this.

"Well, then, Lupin?" he asks, still excited. "What else did you learn? How is the curse cast? How can we prevent it?"

Remus regards him for a moment, almost as though he has only just begun to see him.

"I'm not going to tell you," he answers. "Unless, of course, you'd like to try a quick _Imperius_ or _Cruciatus_ on _me_?"

Moody rises from the table so abruptly his chair falls over and crashes to the floor. Once again his scars stand out palely from the reddening flesh of his face.

"I have _never_ used any of these vile curses on _anyone_, Lupin. _Not ever_. How _dare_ you imply-"

Dumbledore has risen right behind Moody, and quickly moves to stand between the infuriated Auror and Lupin.

"Now, Alastor, Remus is not suggesting that you yourself have-"

"I am, however, suggesting that he cannot _prevent_ their use within the Ministry," Remus interrupts evenly. "And until he _can_ guarantee that the Aurors will pursue their goals without resorting to torture, I see no reason to provide any further information on this matter at all."

Dumbledore stares intently, once again, at Lupin, while Moody frankly gapes at him.

"What do you think this _is_, boy?" he demands. "Where do you think you are? Do you think this is all some sort of _game_? Do you think _Voldemort_ is likely to abide by these prissy little rules you'd like to set down? This is a war! It's ugly and dirty and people get hurt!"

"I myself would not define avoiding a descent into utter savagery as 'prissy', Auror Moody," Lupin replies bitingly. "But I am not particularly concerned with your opinion, either. I will _not_ provide the Ministry with a way to make torture more convenient, and that is my final word."

"Lupin … you …" Moody sputters, enraged, and then turns on Dumbledore.

"Talk to your tame werewolf, Albus," he snaps. "He seems to have forgotten his place."

Now it is Lupin's turn to rise from the table, his face still ashen but set.

"I have not forgotten the _place_ your precious Ministry would like to accord to people like me, Moody. Werewolves, that is. The 'Lycanthropically Afflicted.' Or is it 'Dark Creatures' this month? It's _so_ hard to keep up with the periodic reclassifications."

"Oh – oh, _yes_. Yes," Moody growls. "Now we come to it. You and your bloody moral high ground, your righteous indignation. So superior to the rest of us. But do you have _any_ idea how many sources of vital intelligence you may well be cutting off with all this high-minded rubbish? Have you got any idea how vastly important the information you're withholding might be?"

Moody lowers his voice to a harsh rumble and smiles bitterly. "But you don't care about that, do you? Because you're not really in this at all, are you, Lupin? You never have been. Your heart's not in the fight. Win or lose, what difference does it really make to _you_ how things go, in the end?"

"Alastor!" Dumbledore cries. "That's not-"

Remus goes white and his fists clench.

"I've risked my life daily since I was _eighteen_ to defend a society that would just as soon see me dead! I've risked _everything_ I've ever cared about to fight for a world that cast me out when I was four fucking years old. I've been 'in this' from the beginning, and with absolutely _nothing_ to gain. Can you say that, Moody?"

He turns to Dumbledore. "Or you, Albus? Can _any_ of you? The Order of the bloody useless Phoenix! My God, Moody, and you have the gall to tell _me_ this isn't a game! Don't you _ever_ talk to _me_ about loyalty or commitment!"

"Remus, no one is questioning your-" Dumbledore starts to say.

"Bugger that, Lupin!" Moody shouts. "You're STILL sitting on information that we need to-"

Remus lunges around Dumbledore so quick he manages to get a handful of Moody's collar.

"You want information?" he asks, also shouting. "Talk to Rosier, then, if you can. Take his corpse back to the Ministry and see if you can _mince_ the answers you want right out of his cooling flesh. And while you're trying that, remember that _YOU_ asked _ME_ to do what I could with him!"

"THAT IS ENOUGH!" Dumbledore roars and steps in between the two men. "Both of you! That is quite enough! This is everything Voldemort himself could ask. Alastor, calm yourself. Remus, sit back down. Both of you, do as I say. _Now_."

Remus jerks his hands off Moody and steps stiffly away from him. Now it's Moody who gazes at Remus as though he has never really seen him before.

"Remus…Alastor …" Dumbledore goes on, softly. "Remus, I can't pretend I'm not appalled by the direction the Ministry has taken, and I would never ask you to compromise your -"

"I can speak for myself, Albus," Moody interrupts quietly. He makes eye contact with Remus. "Apology on the table, Lupin. Sorry I questioned your loyalty. I won't again."

"Accepted," Remus puts in quickly. "Let's just … forget it. It's not important. I … I know you don't really believe …forgive me, I …am not myself just now."

"Certainly you're not," Dumbledore quickly agrees. "How could you be, after all you've just experienced? Who among us _is_ himself in this dark time? Alastor, by the same token, I strongly doubt that Remus here believes that you are _personally_ responsible for every single ill that besets the Ministry of Magic."

"No, no, of course I don't," Remus puts in. "I'm sorry I acted as though-"

"Accepted, Lupin," Alastor says with a small grin that looks rather gruesome on his battle-scarred face. "Just a case of nerves. Gets a bit sticky out here in the trenches – happens to all of us. Myself included. Care to see if you could force down another tot of …whadayoucallit – 'swill'?" He pulls out his flask.

Remus also produces a small, slightly wintry smile. "Not unless you can transfigure it into a half-way decent cup of tea, thanks."

Moody snorts, amused, while Dumbledore sets his hand on Remus' shoulder.

"Sit back down, Remus. You're still exhausted and shaken. I want you to be careful on your way home. You're Apparating, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'd planned to. Sirius was going to meet me at-"

"Yes, that's all right, then," Dumbledore interrupts quickly. "There, that's it, just sit down; you'll need to gather your strength a bit before you go. Now, am I right in believing that this …suicide curse … is not actually something that could easily be prevented? Even if you told us everything you know?"

Remus ponders on this question momentarily. Eventually he looks up at Dumbledore, eyebrows raised, and answers. "Not easily. Maybe not at all. It's wandless magic, to start with, and … and the most important aspects of the spell are purely mental. The focus is a state of mind, the sheer determination to die. Certainly I'm not at all sure how _I'd_ go about trying to stop it, if that were my intent. It wouldn't be just a matter of disarming and basic binding spells."

"Alastor, I trust you are taking note of this?" Dumbledore asks.

"Indeed I am. If it's partly a trance-based manipulation, then we're sunk. Those are the very devil to control. Why didn't you just say so, Lupin?"

Remus smiles ruefully. "You didn't ask me that, Moody. And I am a bit …cranky… just at the moment."

"Well, you certainly don't _look_ like you have a temper on you, laddie, I'll give you that. So, what can we do, Albus? Any ideas?"

"Perhaps we might suggest to Barty Crouch that his best hope of keeping his prisoners alive lies in convincing them they will not be treated as badly by the Ministry as they will by their master."

"I don't relish the idea of trying to convince Crouch of _anything_." Moody mutters darkly.

"But that is a discussion for another time, I think," Dumbledore says. "I want Remus to go home and get some rest. Do you have anything you'd like to add, Remus? Anything further you can tell us?"

"Only that …only that Evan – Rosier … he died well. He wasn't some sort of monster at the end. I think someone ought to say that for him, someone ought to know that about him. The Death Eaters are… they're people we went to school with, people we all know. They're us."

"Yes, Remus," Dumbledore confirms gravely. "You are quite right. They _are_ us. That's the tragedy of it."

The small, dingy room is silent for a moment as the three wizards consider their individual tragedies, united in a moment of that regret for which there is no cure, and accompanied by the dead. And then the moment breaks: there is some bustle as Lupin prepares to Apparate out, and there are last-minute apologies for words said in the heat of anger, and last-minute farewells, and eventually Remus stands in the southeast corner of the room, takes his bearings, and vanishes.

There is a harsh cracking sound as air rushes in to fill the space he has just vacated, and the two older wizards are left alone.

"Well, Alastor?" Dumbledore asks, after a time. "Are you convinced?"

"Yes, completely. He's a good man, even if we'll never be certain we can tell him what to do and expect him to just do it without asking some damn hard questions first. And frankly, no spy would ever have told me I could go bugger myself as distinctly as Lupin did. That may have convinced me more than anything else. I wish I hadn't lost my temper with him."

"You are more accustomed to foot soldiers who are willing to follow orders. But Remus is a far more valuable asset, in my opinion."

"Does he know that there's someone in their circle who's giving the Potters' movements to Voldemort?"

"I have no doubt that James will have confided it to his closet friends by now. It would not have immediately occurred to him that one of them could be that person. Yes, Remus knows there's a spy, I should think."

"But you haven't told him that you suspect Black. Is that wise, Albus?

Dumbledore sighs deeply. "Perhaps not. But it is kind, at least until I am certain. He will not want to hear such awful news. Sirius Black is his dearest friend."

"And more as well, if all the gossip is true. But if you're right, and Black _is_ the spy, then Lupin is endangered simply by being so close to him. Shouldn't you at least warn him of your misgivings?"

"I doubt he'd believe me. I can scarcely credit it myself. And as you've seen, Remus is a young man who sorts out his own path. No. We'll give it a little longer."

"Watch and wait. Constant vigilance. I hope you're right, Albus."

Albus Dumbledore looks tired and worn and worried in the dim candlelight.

"How strange," he says. "_I_ am hoping that I'm wrong."


	15. Chapter XII, parts 3, 4, 5

_3._

_Slide and rustle of fabric and the sound of ragged breathing. Taste of flesh - salt and sweet and sharp – the feathery, silken touch of hair sliding through grasping fingers and the warm touch of breath on skin and the mind-altering heat of shared desire. Sirius glittering darkly in the moonlight, too beautiful to be real, sparkling on his pillow like a handful of carelessly thrown jewels, moonstones and diamonds and jet. _

_But he _is_ real. His heart is beating and his blood is flowing and his pale skin fairly rises to meet the greedy hands and lips and tongue that chart its surface. He _is_ real, burning like a fever-dream without, burning like a brand within, burning, burning, a veritable conflagration of passion and everything that's for the heart's lifting that Remus has ever learned. _

_Sirius is the fire in which Remus burns. _

Half an hour earlier, Remus had Apparated into the small cottage Sirius purchased for himself when he'd received a generous bequest from his uncle Alphard at seventeen. They had arranged in advance to meet there and go on to James Potter's place for dinner afterward, and Sirius, having arrived first, must have made himself some tea and sat down on the couch in the living room to do the crossword in the _Prophet_ while he waited for Remus. There had been a cup of cold tea on the side table beside him, and the pages of the newspaper had littered the sofa cushions all around him.

Just lately, Sirius has not been bothering to read the news in the paper at all. He usually demolishes the pages in his haste to pass them by unread and get directly to the puzzle.

But the combination of a quiet household and Sirius' own fatigue must have overcome him as he'd waited, because when Remus had come in, Sirius had been fast asleep on the couch, his quill still held loosely in one curled hand.

Remus had noted, with some dismay, the dark smudges under Sirius' closed eyes as he'd slept, and the new sharpness about the angular planes of his face. None of them are looking very good these days. Sirius too has been pushing well past his limits for the Order, and has been half out of his mind with worry for James just lately as well. The strain has marked his face; even in sleep Remus can see it.

Remus had told himself that he really ought to let Sirius rest. He'd thought about making a Floo call to James and Lily to let them know that he and Sirius would not be joining them for dinner after all from the fire in one of the upstairs bedrooms (these days, no one changes arranged plans for meeting, even for purely social occasions, without informing all concerned parties at once – it is too easy to jump to dreadful conclusions).

Remus had told himself that Sirius was tired and needed his rest and it would not be a kindness to wake him up. But Remus was tired and shaken himself and had been struggling to stave off the wave of black depression that had been threatening to overtake him ever since he spent an indefinable stretch of time inside a dying man's thoughts – and he really hadn't _wanted _to let Sirius sleep.

No. He'd wanted to touch Sirius; he'd wanted to kiss him, he'd wanted to caress and taste and please and everything else, he had wanted all that over and over, he'd wanted to _revel_ in Sirius, he'd wanted to touch him until he could get so drunk on loving Sirius that all the horrible despair he had begun to feel could be pushed back and forgotten, at least for a few hours.

Remus had not been _able_ to let Sirius sleep. He'd needed him too much.

But he hadn't touched his sleeping companion. Not then.

Sirius and Remus have been lovers for five years, ever since a strange moonlit night in a dell by the Forbidden Forest, only five years back but now a world away. When Sirius bought his little house, only a few months after that night, actually, he'd told Remus that he'd looked for one with _two_ bedrooms, so that Remus could choose one that would always be open to him; that would always be there for him to use whenever he wanted, that would be his. When Remus had rather stiffly informed Sirius that although he appreciated the gesture, he could probably keep a roof over his own head without any help, Sirius had lost his temper and called Remus a "bloody stiff-necked fussbudget" and several other insulting things as well, and had raved "I _knew_ you'd take it like that!"

"Moony, you thick pillock," Sirius had gone on. "You know I can't _stand_ living alone! I can barely tolerate eating _breakfast_ alone. You'd be doing _me_ a favor, you pig-headed sod. Why do you think I got the extra bedroom? It's so you know there aren't any strings!"

Remus had smiled at that, and stopped being angry with him.

So when Remus and Sirius had left school that year, Remus had unofficially moved in with Sirius. They'd both maintained a sort of ongoing fiction that Remus didn't live there, not really, that he was only staying in the spare room off and on as a guest, and that had worked for them fairly well. They'd had one rather explosive disagreement when Remus had discovered, about a year after they'd moved in, that Sirius had secretly put Remus' name on the deed to the house as co-owner. There had been some infuriated shouting, and some passing ripples in their sex life, but Sirius had stubbornly refused to change the deed, and now Remus supposes that it really is _his_ cottage, as much as it is Sirius'.

And the extra bedroom generally goes untenanted, more often than not. Sirius hates sleeping alone almost as much as he hates living alone.

But, as Remus had stood over Sirius, conked out on the couch with a half completed crossword puzzle in his lap, he had not touched Sirius. Though Sirius prefers to fall asleep with Remus in his arms and his great hunger for physical contact assuaged, Remus has learned, early on, that Sirius does not like to be touched himself when he is sleeping. He always awakens startled and disoriented and ready to fight, with a clearly dangerous glint in his eyes, if you touch him while he is asleep.

Remus has never known why this should be, although he has formed some suspicions, over the years. But he has decided, long ago, that it is probably one of those things that are better left alone.

So Remus had leaned down over Sirius a bit, and called him instead.

"Sirius?" he'd called softly. "Sirius, wake up."

After a bit more calling, Sirius had opened a pair of bleary eyes and focused, with some difficulty, on Remus.

"Hullo, Moony," he'd said groggily. "When did you get in and why-?"

"Sshhh," Remus had whispered and swiftly bent to kiss Sirius hungrily. He hadn't stopped until he'd felt his own lungs beginning to burn with the need for air, and until he'd been able to hear Sirius' heartbeat starting to pound and flutter.

Remus had had his hands in Sirius' hair (cut shorter than Remus likes it, just now) and his mouth on Sirius' throat and when Sirius had said "Aren't we going over to James' and Lily's-" Remus had interrupted him with another demanding kiss and didn't let him talk again for several moments.

Then Remus had managed to break away for a moment and had raised himself from his crouched position above the couch and had taken one of Sirius' hands and tugged until Sirius too had stood up, amidst the crackle of discarded leaves of newsprint. Remus had not been able to stop touching him; had not been able to touch him enough.

"No talking," Remus had said in a guttural tone of voice, roughened and deepened by lust and need. "I don't want you to talk and I don't want you to think and I don't want to either. Come with me."

And Sirius, to whom the tricky pathways of passion are never all that mysterious, had instantly known enough not to question Remus any further, and he'd kissed him back once and then allowed his friend to lead him wherever he would and do with him whatever he liked. Sirius has always had that rare knack of yielding to his lover's desires as easily and gracefully as he seeks his own. He has always been heartily bored by the issues of power that sex can sometimes raise and is as comfortable being the _object_ of love as he is being the lover.

Remus had only forced himself to stop temporarily anyway. He hadn't wanted to bury himself in loving Sirius on a rickety sofa with a mussed-up newspaper as a coverlet. He'd wanted to burn the entire night and all its dismal memories away in Sirius' flesh, he'd wanted to hear the way Sirius always laughed when he came, he'd wanted to please his partner so much that he _screamed_. He'd wanted to do all that, and more, in a bed.

And he'd wanted to let James and Lily know they'd be two guests shy at dinner as soon as possible, before he'd forgotten everything he knew in the fire he was planning to build, very shortly.

_Sirius is the fire in which Remus burns. _

_Sirius is the one luxury in Remus' life that he clings to and grasps greedily to his heart; he has always been _more_ than Remus would ever have hoped for or even imagined having. His skin glows and glistens under Remus' hands now and he abandons himself to all that Remus does with such wild and untrammeled eroticism that the very _sight_ of him in the throes of orgasm is enough to send Remus there too. _

_Remus' body lifts itself past his ability to control and for a short time, for a single precious breath of space, Remus does not care, Remus does not feel any need to fight for the control that he has needed to survive for most of his life. He need not defend his borders now and he does not; that familiar spiraling, almost shocking gale of pleasure takes him and wrenches him and he _runs_ with it, following its path up and out until he is consumed utterly and all he is spills as easily out of him as magical sparks spilled from their hands the first time Sirius ever came to him like this. _

_Over the past year, they have often been tired and unhappy and afraid and although they used to spontaneously levitate in this familiar moment when all the delight they feel can no longer be contained within the physical confines of their bodies, for some months now, that has not happened. The lack has been only a mild sorrow to them, in this time when so much else is so wrong, and they have had an unspoken mutual agreement not to mention this one disappointment aloud. But now, at least for this one time, it happens again. Remus can feel himself lightening and lifting, he can feel the clutching fingers of gravity miss their grip on him and he and his much-loved Sirius are rising again, floating in midair in their combined ecstasy. Remus can hear the music of Sirius laughing as they rise and he reflects, momentarily, that Sirius is the only adult he knows who can laugh the way a child does, glad and unaffected and so infectiously _alive

_Later, as they are twined together in their bed like newborn cubs and are slowly falling into sated slumber, Remus lays his head on Sirius' chest and listens to all the life inside him, listens to his heart beating, its pulse steady and strong. He thinks of another heartbeat he has measured, earlier in this night, and he tightens his arms around Sirius possessively. He guards the precious rhythm he hears jealously, long after Sirius sleeps, long into the night. _

_4._

Just before dawn that morning, in that darkest of hours, Sirius is awake again and after a time, Remus, who has slept badly and had horrible dreams, begins to feel the weight of Sirius' gaze on him.

"What's wrong?" Sirius finally asks him, softly. "Moony, can't you tell me what's wrong?"

Remus thinks of all the many, _many_ things that are wrong, and of all the dreadful things he has come to know as he has met with many casualties of war in the psychic space beyond the flesh that he has learned to create, and he thinks of the way he'd measured the last moments of Evan Rosier's life by a few fading heartbeats as he'd bid the young man a final farewell. He thinks of how, as he'd listened to Sirius' great heart beating earlier in the night, he'd been terrified by how _real_ the possibility suddenly seemed to him, the possibility that one day – one day soon – it might be _Sirius_ to whom he would have to bid such a long good-bye. One day it might be _Sirius'_ heart he would hear, slowly coming to a stop. Remus simply _cannot_ tell Sirius what is wrong; he cannot distill the whole of it into mere words.

Six years back, Sirius once promised that there would never be a time, ever, when he would not answer Remus' questions. But Remus has made no such promise. He will not give these terrible fears shape and weight by confessing them aloud.

He keeps his eyes shut and pretends to be asleep and lets Sirius' questions pass him by, unanswered.

_5._

The two of them awaken late that day, after such a broken night's sleep, and, in a reversal of the way things usually go, it is Sirius who rises first, while Remus sleeps in for another hour or so.

Sirius decides that perhaps a traditional monstrous English breakfast, served in bed, will help to cheer Moony up a bit. About a year after he had run away from home, when he'd first bought this cottage, he had told himself that it was ludicrous for a full-grown wizard to have no idea whatsoever how to go about feeding himself without a troop of house-elves on stand-by, and he'd doggedly set himself the task of learning how to cook. He has often been a bit surprised since at how easily the small skill has come to him, though it has never become something he has had much interest in.

He himself usually cannot tolerate more than a cup of tea and a scone or some such for breakfast; he never has had much appetite for several hours after he first wakes up. But Remus, he has learned over the course of many years of living together as roommates - first at school and later in this cottage - is almost always hungry, night or day. Sirius supposes this is probably a function of the vast amounts of energy that Remus periodically expends in transformation. He can eat more than James and Sirius and even Peter put together, but his wiry body has always remained lean, and always just a touch too thin by Sirius' reckoning.

Just lately, Sirius has noticed, Remus has become even thinner than usual, although there has been little change in his enormous appetite. He has become gaunt about the face as well, there is always a sort of shadow in his eyes now, and the first small snaps of grey have threaded their way into the soft brown of his hair.

Remus will not tell Sirius what it is he does for the Order. He says he must not. He often goes on mysterious 'missions' that he says he cannot discuss, is gone who knows where for hours at a time and comes back worn to nothing and shaking with fatigue and so troubled that Sirius thinks his own heart will break. Sirius doesn't know what Remus does for the Order, but he does know that whatever it is, it is killing him.

Sirius wishes he could tell Remus that he must stop – that he must stop doing whatever it is that is leaching all the life out of him, bit by bit. Sirius would like to forbid it. But he can't. He cannot ask Remus to stop doing his part in the war that has sucked them all up and is now chewing them to bits, not while he too is slowly using himself up in the same struggle.

And now he has a new venture to undertake, the most dangerous one yet. He has not yet discussed his plans with Remus, and in fact, he and James had been planning to talk to both of their closest friends, Remus and Peter, about it only last night. They had been meaning to talk over dinner about the Fidelius Charm that Dumbledore has said is James' and Lily's best hope.

But this plan had been sweetly undone when Remus had come home fairly vibrating with need last night, and although Sirius regrets being forced now to broach the subject of the Charm to Remus without James' support, he does not regret the many hours of the night he has spent attempting to be all that Remus could wish instead. He never regrets any time spent in making Remus' tiniest whim flesh. The quality of Sirius' sexuality is never strained; he is generous almost to a fault. He may cast curses with the same easy facility as the darkest of wizards, but he was _born_ to love.

Of course, Sirius is not a fool; he knows that Remus is not likely to take to the idea of the Charm at all well. It is complex and difficult and undertaking the role of the Secret Keeper will be the _most_ dangerous thing Sirius has ever done in a lifetime of careless courting of assorted dangers. So Sirius prepares a veritable feast for Remus' breakfast, both to cheer his weary friend up a bit, and, he hopes, to help soften the news Sirius plans to give him, very soon.

As he bustles about the kitchen, wand in hand, setting pots to boiling and bacon to frying, he imagines James will have decided to handle discussing the matter with Peter himself, while Sirius handles Remus, and he silently wishes his best friend good luck in the task. For James' sake, he hopes Peter will be easier to deal with than he expects Remus to be.

After about an hour has passed, Sirius has his huge consolation offering of food prepared, and loads a tray with his feast, ready to haul all up the stairs. He himself has never had less appetite in his life. The appealing fragrances of tea steeping and butter melting on warm crumpets and bacon and tomatoes mingling waft upward from the tray and turn Sirius' nervous stomach a bit, as he climbs the stairs to where Remus sleeps.

Once inside their bedroom, Sirius sets the breakfast tray down on the bureau for a moment and goes to Remus' side and gently smoothes some of the mussed hair off of his brow. In five years of loving and living together, both men have learned much about one another's smallest habits and preferences. While Remus knows it is best to awaken Sirius through calling, Sirius has learned that Remus most prefers to wake to gentle caresses. His eyes drift open now and he rewards Sirius with a small, pleased smile, open and untroubled.

"It's half noon, Moony," Sirius tells him. "I hated to wake you but I thought you might be hungry. I've brought a spot of breakfast, if you're interested."

Remus smiles again and sniffs the air as he rubs some of the sleep out of his eyes. He pulls himself into a sitting position, back propped against the headboard.

"I am always interested in breakfast, Paddy," he says sleepily. "Breakfast is a fascinating subject." He stops and eyes the heavily laden tray on the bureau in a rather predatory way, nostrils dilating. "It smells wonderful. What all have you got there?"

"Oh, a few dribs and drabs. I was going to take it to grandma's house until I ran across you, Mr. Wolf. Let's examine the evidence, shall we? Stay there, you can have it in bed."

Sirius brings the tray over to Remus and sets it before him, then goes around to his side of the bed and curls up on it, knees bent slightly under him and head propped on one hand.

"Pour me a cup of tea, would you, mate?" he asks. "There's an extra cup by the teapot."

Remus pours the tea while he peeks under the lids of dishes and takes note of the large variety of foods Sirius has brought him. It is a typical Sirius-prepared meal; delicious and far too rich and completely irresistible and _much_ too much. Remus smiles as he thinks of all the ways that Sirius, now twenty-two, still goes overboard exactly as he did when he was only twelve. Remus passes him the warm cup.

"Tea?" he asks, grinning. "Is that all you're having? There's still that long trip through the forest to grandma's, you know."

"Ta," Sirius says as he takes the cup and sips a bit. "Well, Moony, I may not go. I seem to have misplaced my picnic basket somewhere. Besides, you know I'm not all that hungry if I cook. More for you. Try the eggs, I put a dash of parsley and some cardamom in them this time."

"So, you're just going to sit there and watch me make a glutton out of myself, then, are you?" Remus asks lightly, taking a bit of scrambled egg on his fork.

Sirius smiles lasciviously and waves an indolent hand. "I enjoy watching you eat," he says. "You're voracious - insatiable. It's almost unbearably sexy. Spread some of that marmalade on your crumpet, why don't you? I like the way you do that."

Remus sets his knife and fork down on the tray decisively and leans over and kisses Sirius, hard, on his mouth.

"Leading me astray, are you, you wicked thing?" he asks, chuckling, when he is done and as he picks his fork back up. "Crumpets, indeed. You are a depraved and vulgar-mouthed guttersnipe and I hope your grandma never finds out just what a disappointing Little Red Riding Hood you really are. It'd break the poor old girl's heart. The eggs are delicious, by the way."

"Ah, success," Sirius answers, laughing, and he settles back against his pillow and watches with interest as Remus steadily makes his way through the enormous amount of food Sirius has put before him. He sips at his tea and enjoys the delicate way Remus grips his cutlery, the neatness of his small hands and the precise manner in which they move. He stares hard enough to make Remus blush a little, every now and then, and he wonders which god he should thank for allowing him this small and exquisite pleasure, that even after five years, he can still cause Remus to blush.

In time, Remus can eat no more and he settles back against his pillows and the headboard, considerably lightened breakfast tray still atop him, and sighs with content.

"Good heavens," he says to Sirius. "I think you may have killed me. I'm as stuffed as a tick. That can't be healthy."

Sirius springs up and takes Remus' tray away. "Oh, you'll burn it all off in no time. You always do – you're like a bottomless pit."

He sets the tray back on the bureau, pours them both another cup of tea, and brings the cups back to the bed. He hands Remus his, and then sits down again in the bed they share, sitting cross-legged on the sheets, watching as Remus takes another sip.

"I …" he starts to say, and then stops, wondering how he can begin to tell Remus all the things that he is positive Remus will not want to hear. "Remus, I want to talk to you."

Remus smiles. "I might have known _this_ much breakfast indicated some further agenda on your part, Paddy. And you've been on pins and needles throughout the whole process, too, though you've done a good job of hiding it."

Sirius starts to speak, then stops. Remus laughs, despite himself.

"Go on, just spill it. How bad can it be? I'm as properly anesthetized by vast quantities of food as humanly possible. _Nothing_ is going too upset me too much, at this stage."

"We'll see…" Sirius mutters to himself and looks into Remus' eyes for a moment, searching them. "You know that James and Lily have had three run-ins with Voldemort so far already, yes?"

All of Remus' playful relaxation and posture of logy contentment vanish in an instant, Sirius can see it. They have both been frightened sick for their friend and his family over the past year, and Sirius can watch the line of thought in Remus' mind unfold, illustrated with perfect clarity on his face: if Sirius felt he had to broach this subject only after lulling Remus with breakfast feasts and doting indulgence, then worse news yet must surely be in the offing. Sirius can see Remus' eyes and lips narrowing as he tries to brace himself for whatever Sirius intends to tell him.

"That kind of luck won't last indefinitely," Sirius goes on. "And Voldemort will never stop."

Remus takes a gulp of his tea and scowls. "All because of some vague bloody _prophecy_!" he snaps. "As if any sane wizard in the world believes in such nonsense. As if Voldemort, or anyone else, had ever even heard the whole of the beastly thing!"

"But Voldemort is just the sort of superstitious, splinter-brained wanker who _does_ put stock in such things," Sirius says. "And he's bloody-minded enough to think that he can alter the course of destiny with a few little adjustments here and there. He'll never give this up until…until baby Harry is dead. He'll walk through anyone to make that happen…and…and…"

Sirius stops for a second or two, afraid, momentarily, even to go on saying such terrible things.

"And James and Lily…" Remus finishes for him, however unwillingly. "James and Lily can't expect to defy him successfully forever, can they?"

"They're on borrowed time as it is," Sirius admits, equally unwillingly.

Remus swallows and Sirius can see his throat working. Then he squares himself in the bed and looks directly into Sirius' eyes.

"All right, Sirius," he says. "All right. Tell me what the plan is. You and James have been working something out, haven't you? What is it?"

"It's not just us," Sirius puts in quickly. "Dumbledore is the one who came up with the idea in the first-"

"Oh, for God's sake, can't you _please_ stop equivocating and just out with it? You're scaring me to death. Just _tell_ me!"

"All right, then. We think … Dumbledore thinks…we plan to cast a Fidelius Charm."

There is a sudden silence in the pleasant, sunny bedroom in the wake of these words, a silence so profound and so weighted with dread that it almost seems to crush all the air and light out of the space around them. Remus stares at Sirius dumbly, and Sirius can watch as all the color washes out of Remus' face. He can almost _see_ Remus mentally running through the specifics of this Charm, calculating the odds, deducing which roles will fall to which wizards – what part James will take, what part Lily will take … what part _Sirius_ will take.

"Oh … _no_, Sirius," Remus whispers, throat constricted. "No, no, no. You _can't_."

"Look, Remus - even Dumbledore says-"

"I don't care _what_ he says!" Remus interrupts, voice rising. "It's easy enough for him to pass out the advice, it's not his life – but you, of all people – _you_ ought to understand the problem – remember what they did to Regulus!"

Sirius' expression hardens at this mention of Regulus, his younger brother, murdered by Voldemort's agents a little over a year ago - in spite of the last-ditch efforts Sirius had made to help him. It is a lasting source of bitterness.

"I _always_ remember Regulus," he reminds Remus, voice soft and keenly edged.

But Remus doesn't care that he's stomping past one of Sirius' most inflexible boundaries just now. "Good," he says. "I'm glad you do. Because if you do this thing-"

"This 'thing' has nothing at all to do with Regulus or anyone else! It's about Harry and Lily and stopping-"

"No, by God, it is _not_! It's about _James_! And it's about you! If you-"

"What the hell else can we do? How much longer will it be before their luck runs out? How much longer can they keep running? Keep hiding? How many times can they come face to face with Voldemort himself and hope to beat him again? We have to do _something_, Remus. We have to."

"Fine. Do something. Do anything. But not this."

Remus throws his legs to the side of the bed in his agitation and abruptly stands up.

"Not _this_ Charm, Sirius. You especially must not-"

Sirius rises to his feet too, and begins to pace to and fro beside the bed. "Then _what_ charm? Which spell? What _can_ we do? Remus – this is the only way we can-"

Remus strides around to where Sirius is and halts him in mid-step as he puts his hands on Sirius' shoulders and grasps him tightly, as though he's afraid that Sirius will somehow slip away.

"Stop. Just stop. Listen to me. You - especially _you_, Sirius – _you must not be their Secret Keeper_."

Sirius eyes narrow and he resists a sudden impulse to shake Remus' hands off him. "How do you know I will be? What, exactly, makes you so certain of it?"

Remus, unexpectedly, suddenly brays harsh laughter and pulls his hands away without any impetus from Sirius.

"Are you _mad_?" he asks Sirius, still laughing. "Have you lost your mind? Is there anyone in the entire wizarding world who _won't_ be able to guess who James Potter's Secret Keeper must be? How do I _know_? The whole bloody _world_ will know, the moment you cast that Charm!"

Sirius finds that, oddly, he is actually a bit amused to hear this response. Trust Remus Lupin to pick out the one genuine flaw in a plan even Albus Dumbledore believes to be otherwise viable. Sirius shakes his head and shrugs.

"That can't be helped," he says. "The Fidelius is their best hope and we have to try it. And someone does have to be the Secret Keeper, you know that. We needn't advertise that we're attempting it, after all."

Remus shakes his head now. "How long do you think it will take Voldemort to figure it out? The moment James and Lily are suddenly untraceable, he'll know. And how long after that will it be before every Death Eater in Europe will be dropping everything to join in the hunt for _you_?"

"But I'll be in hiding. They'll have to find me before-"

"A week. Two at most. No longer than that."

"That might be an overly pessimistic estimate, Remus," Sirius objects. "I think I can hide a little bit better than that."

In spite of his distress at how badly this conversation is going, Sirius finds that there is a slightly familiar and almost comfortable aspect to it. This is the way they have always worked together, he and Remus. They've always bounced this or that idea back and forth between their two disparate intellects, tweaking, shaping, honing in on fine details that either one of them, alone, might have missed. Remus sees what he overlooks. He makes the connections that Remus doesn't catch. In a way, it will be a benefit to filter this plan through Remus. It already has been.

"All right, then, make it three weeks," Remus is saying. "Make it a month. The point is, they already have us outnumbered ten to one. They have the numbers to put out a net so tight you'll be pinned down completely in very little time. And once that happens…"

"That may not happen, though – not for a while – and even if-"

"And once that happens," Remus goes on as though he hasn't even heard Sirius' objections. "They'll spend however many lives it takes to capture you alive. Alive, Sirius – you understand? Because _you'll_ have the secret and _nothing_ will matter more to the Dark Lord than digging it out of you, one way or another. Eventually you'll be brought directly to Voldemort and then … and then he and those who serve him will go to work on you."

Sirius looks into Remus' eyes, always so tired, so full of shadows in recent days.

"Are you so afraid I'll tell him, then?" he asks Remus softly.

A dreadful cracked smile crosses Remus' face and he suddenly crumples into a sitting position on the bed, as though his legs will no longer hold him upright.

"No, you brave, daft, naïve bloody fool," he answers. "I'm afraid you won't."

The two of them stare at one another for a long while, and yet another moment of oppressive silence further drains all the comfort of the pleasant surroundings away as they both try to frame the right words to continue to discuss the unthinkable.

"Remus…" Sirius finally begins. "Remus…it's James. I just can't stand aside and do nothing while he-"

"Please, Sirius," Remus interrupts. "_Please_. Don't do this."

"What, then?" Sirius answers helplessly. "It's the only way. Even Dumbledore thinks that-"

"Albus Dumbledore! I told you, I don't _care_ what he thinks! He won't be the one groveling under a _Crucio_ in some filthy dungeon somewhere! If he's so set on this Charm, let _him_ be the Secret Keeper!"

Sirius turns away from the bed where Remus is sitting and paces toward the window. He can see through the panes how lovely an afternoon it has turned out to be.

"He offered, I understand," Sirius says to the window. He does not wish to repeat to Remus all that James has told him about Dumbledore - not while looking him in the face. "James said he did offer to do that. But James turned him down."

"_Why_?" Remus asks. "How could James possibly wish this suicidal task on _you_? He loves you almost as much as I do."

"Almost as much?" Sirius asks gently.

"No one in this world loves you the way I do, Sirius. Not even James. This is not a matter for debate. Why did he say no to Albus?"

"Because I told him to. I told him he could."

Remus covers his own face with his hands as he nods jerkily. "Of course. Of course you did. I should have guessed. May I ask why?" he asks, voice muffled in his hands.

"Albus is… sometimes he …he worries so much about the forest that he can't see that it's made up of trees. Do you know what I mean? For him, there's only the one priority - the fate of our world and all its people. But sometimes he forgets that people are individuals. And that some things are worth more than the whole world and everything in it combined. He's the best hope we have against Voldemort and I'd trust him to lead us all until the very end – but I don't dare trust him with the James and Lily's lives."

"But it's James' decision to trust or not, isn't it?"

"Yes. Yes it is, but …there's something else too. A reason why James has begun to believe that … Albus' judgment may be clouded. You know there's a spy in the Order; we've all known that for nearly a year. Someone close enough to be leaking information about the Potters' movements to Voldemort?"

Remus takes his hands away from his face and glances at Sirius sharply. All he can see is Sirius' back, silhouetted darkly in the light from the window. "Yes?" he asks.

"Albus thinks it's me," Sirius says quietly.

Remus is utterly dumbfounded by this news and he cannot think how to answer for a shocked moment.

"You? He believes that _you_ are the one who..?" he finally manages. "But that's absurd. Impossible. How could he possibly…are you sure? How do you know this?"

Sirius finds that he can turn back toward Remus, and, in fact, _needs_ to see his face just now. He moves a few steps closer to where Remus is sitting.

"James," Sirius answers. "James told me. Not that I hadn't _sensed_ there was something wrong there – have done for some time. I just didn't know what it was. When he and Dumbledore first discussed the Fidelius Charm, James did think of me first for the Secret Keeper, and said so. But Dumbledore said no, said that _he'd_ do it, rather than have James choose me. And then he told him why."

"James _never_ believed him, though?" Remus whispers. "James could _never_ think that _you _would betray-"

"No, no, of course not. James knows it's not true, but … when you think about it, Moony…" Sirius pauses for a moment, a dark, ugly smile twisting his fine features.

"When you think about it, I'm not actually that bad a suspect," Sirius goes on, in a brittle, quietly savage voice. "My brother was a Death Eater, for one thing, and you know Dumbledore felt it was too great a risk to try to help him leave Voldemort's service, even when I asked him to. That alone isn't exactly the sort of thing that would inspire much confidence, don't you think? And then there's my mother and my father and loads of other relations too, openly sympathetic to Voldemort, the whole lot of them. And then there are the hundreds of generations of Dark Wizards and assorted other maniacs on the old family tree, aren't there? There's that bad old Black blood behind everything, isn't there? Always behind everything. Everything I say and everything I do – always just – just out of sight – but always there – always-"

"Sirius," Remus breaks in, rising swiftly to his feet and closing the distance between himself and Sirius. He takes Sirius' hands gently into his. "Sirius, stop. Stop cutting yourself up. No one believes those things."

"Well, no, actually, quite a few people do. Certainly Albus Dumbledore does," Sirius points out with a bitter bark of laughter. "I ask you! If the most powerful and perceptive wizard in the world can't trust me, who can?"

"_I_ can, Paddy," Remus says firmly. "James can. Lily and Harry can. Peter can. The people who _really_ know you - the ones that love you – we'd trust you with our lives _and_ our hearts and everything in the world we hold dear as well. You don't have to die for a friend to prove you're not an evil man!"

"Oh, Moony," Sirius murmurs hopelessly. "Don't you understand? It's not so I can die. It's so James can _live_."

"Sirius. Sirius…" Remus repeats brokenly. "Don't _I_ have any claim here? Don't you realize what will happen to you if you do this thing? You do, don't you? You have to a damn good idea – you've seen Voldemort's handiwork. Doesn't what _I_ want have any bearing at all? Don't you love _me_ too?"

Sirius strokes Remus' scarred, familiar cheek as though it was the finest, most delicate china, and puts his arms loosely around his love's neck. "I _do_ love you. I've always loved you, right from the time when we were both little and you would cry in your sleep and I used to wonder how such a nice, quiet boy could ever have such bad dreams," Sirius says. "You _know_ how much I love you. But you can't ask me to choose between …"

Sirius stops talking because he can't go on.

"Between James and me," Remus finishes for him. He holds Sirius' hands a touch more firmly and bores into his eyes with the intensity of his own gaze. "It's not fair of me to force such a choice on you, Sirius, I do understand that. But I don't care if it's right, or if it's selfish, or if it makes you think less of me in the end. _I_ want you to live. And I don't care, really, what it costs or who it might harm – as long as you live on. I love this world we live in only because you're in it. Everything I ever knew about love or joy or the way the human soul should be I learned from you. _Please_, Sirius. I _do_ ask you. If you love me, don't do this."

Sirius, in all his years of loving Remus Lupin, never thought there'd ever be a time when Remus would ask something of him that he could not gladly give. His heart is breaking and his eyes are burning and he suddenly understands, much to his surprise, that standing tears are what is scalding them. He rarely ever cries.

"I do love you, Moony," he answers thickly. "More than the moon and the stars and all the mystery and magic in the whole night sky. But … but you must understand. I…I love James too."

Remus nods slowly, dreamily, like a man in a nightmare, and takes a stumbling step back.

"I do understand," he says after a painful pause. "I do. I'm your lover, but James is your brother; I'm your night and he's your day, isn't that right? You love us both, and there's no way of saying which of us is more dear to you. But you loved him _first_."

Sirius' unexpected tears overflow his eyes and trace burning paths down his face as he nods – yes – in answer. He cannot lie to Remus. He swore, six years earlier, that he'd never lie to Remus again.

"Can you forgive me?" he asks, so softly that Remus hears him more with his heart than with his ears.

Remus stares up at him for a time, as though he is trying to memorize every smallest contour and subtle angle of his face. Then he pulls Sirius against him and holds him tight against his own breast and strokes Sirius' hair with one hand and when he answers, he is murmuring into the skin of Sirius' throat, face and mouth pressed hard against him.

"Forgive you?" Remus' muffled voice asks. "What for? For not being able to divide your own devoted heart? For being who you are? Do you really think I could ever hold any of that against you? It's _why_ I love you the way I do."

They hold one another in this way for an incalculable moment, and when they break apart, Sirius sees, again to his surprise, that Remus' eyes are wet too. Sirius seldom cries, but Remus _never_ does. Sirius' heart twists inside him anew to be the cause of these tears, as rare as phoenix eggs.

Remus breaks away from Sirius and walks toward the window himself, staring out at the pretty day beyond the glass as he makes a visible effort to collect himself, dashing the never-seen tears from his eyes impatiently and then drumming his neat, square-tipped fingernails against the window sill – thinking, Sirius can see. Weighing some scant variety of choices, perhaps, and all of them bad. Sirius waits, watching him carefully.

"Very well, Paddy." Remus says at last. His voice is even and carefully controlled. It's his Fortress Moony voice. Sirius knows it very well. "All right. I won't continue to ask you for what you can't give. Perhaps it was wrong of me to expect you to…ah …never mind, that's done."

Remus turns away from the window and the day beyond it and looks back at Sirius. Sirius could almost recoil before the hard, terrible determination he sees in Remus' eyes.

"I am, however, going to ask you to make me a promise that you _can_ keep. When you're captured, when the Death Eaters do get hold of you-"

"Remus," Sirius interrupts. "Remus, that is not a _fait_ _accompli_ just yet. The fortunes of war do take unexpected turns. I might surprise you."

"This isn't a _war_, Sirius." Remus snaps. "We're well past that point, and you know it. It's not a war, it's a fucking _massacre_. And you're next. Listen to me. Once they have you, you can expect-"

"I think I know what I can expect," Sirius interrupts.

"No - you don't. You only have an idea. Listen to me. They'll try the _Imperius _first. That won't work on you; of course, you've been able to resist that one effectively since you were only fifteen or so. They'll want to try a few of the other curses before they move on to the _Cruciatus_ - using the _Cruciatus_ is tricky; the subject's mind can break. Yours won't, I'd estimate, but they won't know that, at first, so they'll want to use some of their real experts for that curse - there are a couple of perfect sadists among them who've made it an art form. But you're strong, and you've learned a few things about managing pain from me, over the years-"

Sirius has been staring at Remus through this detailed catalogue of Death Eater interrogation techniques in increasing shock. He now interrupts through numbed lips. "Remus …Moony…how …how can you know all this?"

"Never mind how I know," Remus answers impatiently. "Just believe that I _do _know When none of the magic they'll try works, they'll begin to work on you direct, with their hands, with …with instruments – McNair's their technician, he's developed a few clever little devices. They'll work on your body and your mind. They'll be looking for an opening, some way to break you down. They won't be operating blind, either; there _will_ be people who know you among them."

"Remus, where did you-"

"Be quiet! Listen to me. The Death Eaters are _us_, Sirius. They're the people we grew up with, the people who've known us all our lives. Your cousin, Lucius Malfoy. Your boyhood enemy, or so I suspect, Severus Snape. Your cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange. And _they'll_ know how to get to you, what to do to-"

"Remus. Please - _please_ don't go on. How do you _know_?"

"I _know_!" Remus shouts, voice like a whipcrack. "Listen to me, Sirius. I _know_. It'll be long and …and …degrading and brutal and you'll be glad when it's over and there won't be much left of you when they're done, whether you ever talk or not. _But it doesn't have to be that way_."

Sirius doesn't want to listen to another word. Not one more. Because if Remus knows these things – if he knows these names and these methods and how it's going to be as well as he seems to – then he must… he must somehow …

Remus is still talking, going on relentlessly, even though Sirius has begged him to stop. "It doesn't have to be that way, not for you. There's a way you can stop it all before it even begins. There's a curse, a special curse I'm going to teach you. They call it the _Nihiliatus_. They'll never expect you to know it, it's a Death Eater secret. You can-"

"No!" Sirius cries, and comes very, very close to clapping his hands over his ears. "No, no, no! Stop. Not another word! You - you don't know any Death Eater secrets! You can't! Because if you did …"

"Be quiet, Sirius!" Remus interrupts again. "_How_ I know doesn't matter! I want you to promise me you'll learn what I'm going to teach you now. I want you to promise me you'll use it when the time comes. I can't ask you to live – not if it'll cost you more than you can give. But if you _must_ die – if that's really the way it has to be – then I can at least ask you to die clean. Without pain. I do have that much claim on you; I do have that much right. I can't even bear the _thought_ of you dying in inches, one blood-soaked moment at a time." Remus' voice trembles as he says this last, and his face looks grey and sick.

"I _can_ ask that you won't subject yourself to that, and I _do_ ask it," he finishes.

Sirius tries to wrap his mind around the stunning idea that Remus – clever, kind, patient Remus, who is the best person Sirius has ever known – that it is Remus who has been the spy all along. He meets a blank mental wall of impenetrable incomprehensibility and he feels as if the very foundations of his world are quaking. How is it possible? How can it be?

He cannot form any answer; cannot speak at all. He can only gaze at Remus, who has suddenly become a stranger before his very eyes.

"Do you love me, Sirius?" Remus is asking, no hint of compromise in his voice or in his face at all.

Sirius is sometimes as cruelly trapped in his own great capacity to love as he is empowered by it. He can no more close his own heart than he can _unhear_ all the awful things his love has just revealed to him. Though he'd give the world if only he could. Of _course_ he loves Remus. He loves him with every pulse of his blood. He cannot _not_ love him.

He nods dumbly to Remus, eyes huge in his white face.

"Then you'll listen and learn," Remus says in response. "_Listen_. The incantation is '_Nihilium'._ You needn't speak it clearly aloud, but you must _hear_ it clearly, up here." Remus taps his own brow. "'_Nihilium'_. Repeat that back once, all right?"

"No…" Sirius manages to push out through his newly obstructed throat. "No, I won't."

"Yes, you must. Attend. Repeat after me – '_Nihilium'_."

Sirius is hit by a wave of dizziness as he hears these words, and an old memory that he does not even consciously recall makes him feel faint, makes his skin go cold, and oddly, makes him feel as though he is suddenly very small. He sways a bit and braces his hand against the bed-post to keep his balance.

"No. No. Please stop, Remus. Please."

"I'd stop if I could, Sirius. I would. But you _must_ learn this. Go on, just say it once. Please, let me hear it once. If you love me."

Sirius is trapped. Remus, who loves him far beyond the telling of it and who may know him better than anyone else has ever done, knows just how to close all the roads Sirius has. He is not the only person in Sirius' life who has ever guessed that love is the one force on earth that can control him, but he is the one person who can wield this weapon the most effectively. He has not left Sirius a choice.

"'_Nihilium_'," Sirius repeats, voice cracking. "God _damn_ you. '_Nihilium'_."

"Good," Remus says. He's crying again, Sirius can see. Sirius doubts he even knows it. Or that he would care or stop his horrifying lesson if he did. "That's good. Now, the focus is a state of mind. You won't need a wand. Pain is the wand. Understand? Pain is the wand. What's the greatest physical pain you've ever felt? Think. Think and remember."

Sirius can't halt the vivid sense memory that springs, full-blown, into his mind under Remus' unrelenting tutelage. When he had been six, he'd come down with a case of Erumpent Pox, a highly communicable and very dangerous magical infection. He'd had to be isolated, to protect Regulus and others in the household from contracting the illness, and he'd been so feverish that all of his memories of the event have a strange, hot, glassy quality to them. His throat had burned as though he'd been living on an exclusive diet of acid and broken glass, and his head had throbbed as though it was going to burst, and every inch of his skin had been covered in the burning, insanely itchy greenish pox. He'd had to have padded mitts charmed onto his hands, to stop him from tearing at his own skin. Sirius remembers this childhood illness now, sixteen years later - how it was, being so small and alone and burning up with fever and not understanding and thinking he'd go mad if he didn't stop itching soon and sincerely wishing he was dead. He doesn't _want_ to remember it, but he does.

Remus has been watching his face, watching these vivid memories rampage across Sirius' features. "You have a memory, then?" he asks. "Yes. I see you do. That's your focus – that's your wand. The recollection of the pain, of how you thought death would have been infinitely easier. A perfect sense memory. Can you create that?"

"Yes," says Sirius roughly, after a sullen pause. "Oh, yes, I can do that. Like it or not. Are you satisfied yet?"

"No," Remus answers, still oblivious to the tears that are staining his cheeks. "No, I'm sorry, not yet. There are the hand movements. You must learn those. You focus your mind on the sense memory. You allow pain to be your mental fulcrum and you make the invocation – clearly – in your mind's ear, if not aloud. '_Nihilium'_. And then you point, Sirius. There's a standard order, a ritualized set of gestures. You can use your fingers if your hands are bound. Watch me."

"No. I don't want to watch. I don't want to see. Please don't ask me to do this."

Remus won't listen. Perhaps he can't. "_Watch_," he repeats, not allowing for argument. He points to his right temple, then to his chest, and then he forks his index and middle fingers and jabs them toward his eyes. "You see? Like this…" he repeats the series of movements again, precisely. "You have the order? Head, chest, eyes. Show me once."

"Remus, I don't want to do this. I _won't_ do it. Stop asking me."

"Sirius, do you love me? Show me the sequence."

"_Fuck_," Sirius snarls and his hands move along the path that Remus has shown him. "Head," he snarls again, pointing. "Chest," his long fingers point toward his heart. "Eyes," he growls, and forks his fingers perfectly, getting the perfect degree of viciousness into the gesture on the very first attempt. Sirius has always been a quick study, whether he wants to be or not. He has an instinctive understanding of the way the components of new spells must fit together, the directions in which the various streams of imagination ought to flow.

"Good," Remus comments, because he also has innate talents of his own. He is a born teacher, regardless of how abominable his subject might be. "That's good. You have it. Head, chest, eyes. Brain, heart, soul. This curse stops them all, instantly and painlessly. It's a variant of the Killing Curse, I've been told, and I think that must be right. Brain, heart, soul. You understand?"

"But _who_ told you, Remus? Who told you how to cast this foul thing?"

Remus sighs, weary and miserable. It's plain why Sirius asks this question; clear enough what he must think. "Does it really matter?" he asks. "You can see how it would work? You believe that you could do it?"

Sirius nods, sharply, abruptly. "Oh, yes," he growls. "Head, chest, eyes. Brain, heart, soul. It'll work. Why wouldn't it? It even has a kind of malignant elegance to it, simple as it is. I could do it easily enough. _Now_ are you satisfied?"

Remus almost smiles, though the warmth from it doesn't quite reach his wet eyes. Sirius is a talented wizard, one of the very best Remus has ever known. It's always more rewarding to teach an apt pupil, however bitter the lesson. "Are you sure? You're positive you could do it?"

"_YES_, for love of God, yes! I'm sure. All right? Is it enough for you yet?"

"Almost," Remus answers. "It's almost enough. Only one more thing. Will you promise me that you _will_ do it? When the time comes, when there's no other choice, will you promise me – on your honor – that you won't wait around? You'll remember what you've learned today? You'll perform this curse?"

Sirius looks again into Remus' eyes, sees the unconscious tears and all the horror in them and the hard, stony light that fills them. He sees clearly how truly terrible love can also be.

"For the last time, Remus," he whispers. "Don't say these things to me. Don't ask this of me."

"But I do ask it. Promise me, Sirius. "

"No. I _won't_."

"Yes. Please. _Please_, Sirius, say that you'll do it."

"No. I won't say that."

"Do you love me?"

Sirius feels as though he cannot breathe. He feels as though the very walls of his heart are caving in, strangling him. "Ahh – ahhh - _GOD_," he groans, voice choked. "Stop it. Don't. _Stop_."

"No. I can't," Remus answers, and he brings his face so close to Sirius' that Sirius can see all the drawn, tense lines in it. He could make a map of them, if he chose. Remus takes hold of Sirius' face, closes his hands around his white cheeks gently, but still firmly enough that Sirius is unable to look away. He reaches up and kisses Sirius once, on his forehead.

"Sirius," he says. "Paddy. Do you love me?"

Remus has Sirius neatly boxed in. His nature is what it is. How well Remus knows it.

"Yes," Sirius finally answers, and the words are so raw they sound as if they might crack open and bleed. But how else _can_ he answer? What other answer is there? "_Yes_, I love you. Always."

"Then promise me. Won't you promise me, Sirius?"

Remus adds a gentle, final kiss to his argument, just one more kiss to finish the job of tipping the scales. Sirius permits him to do it. He is not the sort of man who has the ability to turn away from love, no matter how it may consume him.

Another moment passes, the last. Everything they have ever been together is on one side of this silent moment, and everything they will be waits on the other. The line of division is only a single moment of silence – only a fragile absence of sound.

"All right," Sirius answers in the end, defeated. "I promise."


	16. Chapter XII, part 6

6.

On the evening of October 23rd, Sirius comes to the Potters' place for one last discussion of the Fidelius Charm they plan to cast the following night. He is, understandably, in an appropriately somber state of mind. The last thing he expects is to be met at the door by a disheveled and desperate-looking James Potter, who says only "Thank heaven you're here!" and thrusts a squalling, angry baby into Sirius' arms.

Sirius wordlessly settles the crying baby Harry onto his hip and follows James inside the house, watching as James resets the wards on his front door. Then they both walk into the living room, young Harry howling with typically lusty infant wrath the whole way.

"See if you can get him to calm down, won't you, Sirius?" James calls over his shoulder. "He's driving me out of my mind. You can always cheer him up."

"What's wrong with my favorite godson?" asks Sirius, trying to project a cheerfulness he doesn't feel.

"He's cutting a new tooth, poor thing," James explains above Harry's loud sobs. "Been in a foul mood all day. Lily tried every charm she could think of on him, but nothing worked – she even tried a couple of Muggle remedies. Useless. She finally couldn't stand it anymore and took off for her mother's. She'll be back in a couple of hours, though."

Sirius looks into his young godson's red little face, into his vivid green eyes, currently awash in angry tears. He reaches down inside himself and finds a bit of Padfoot, and chuffs for baby Harry in an amusingly doggy fashion, blowing a burst of air out of his nose and onto the baby's face. Harry's screams cut off at once, as though some internal crying switch has suddenly been toggled to 'off'. He goggles up at Sirius comically and touches Sirius' nose with one tiny damp fist.

"Oh, it _can't_ be as bad as all that, mate," Sirius says to the baby soothingly, and kisses his knotted forehead. "Just think what a fine set of choppers you'll have once it's all done. Why, you'll be the envy of alligators and crocodiles everywhere!"

"He won't either," James argues testily. "He'll have pretty teeth, like his mum."

"Not if he keeps cutting new ones at this rate," Sirius answers, smiling. "What's this, the fourth one this fall? Pretty soon he'll have a smile like a Hungarian Horntail. Won't you, Harry, old bean?"

"Zziltip!" Harry replies, still eyeing Sirius' nose suspiciously. "Doonaleeesha."

"Zziltip - too right!" Sirius agrees solemnly. "Couldn't have said it better myself. Quagalog tret!"

"Zagmire," Harry agrees.

"Flabbanbroxen trinx?" Sirius asks him.

"Blecca-blecca brong eef," Harry explains. "Jastamount!"

"Meeef meff," Sirius says to him in understanding tones, and turns to James. "He says his mouth hurts like blazes, and he's vexed at you for passing your absurd hair on to him."

Harry slings a companionable arm around Sirius' neck and regards his father gravely. James can't help but laugh.

"He never said that," James answers. "He likes his hair – likes how he can make it all stand on end at once. Would you care for some tea or something while you're busy making dubious translations of Harry-talk?"

"Dubious indeed," Sirius says. "You don't know the half of it. Yes, please, and I'll need a shot of firewhiskey too." He takes Harry over to the sofa and sits down on the floor at its foot, stretching his long legs out under the coffee table and setting Harry to standing before him, guiding the baby's little hands to the edge of the table. Harry grasps it tightly and wobbles a bit as he tries to find his balance.

James goes into the kitchen to make a pot of tea while Sirius helps Harry with his standing practice, the two of them having an animated conversation in Harry-talk all the while. Sirius has not felt so relaxed and untroubled as he does right now at any time over the last three days. While Remus has not moved out of their home after the last conversation he and Sirius had, he has spent most of his time out of the house, doing whatever it is that he does. Sirius does not want to even think about what that might be, and he mentally cuts off the burgeoning train of thought that springs to his mind full-blown in midstream, as he has already done thousands of times for the last seventy-two hours, every time Remus has entered his thoughts.

The two of them have been distantly civil to one another whenever they have been unable to avoid being in the same room together, and this has been a practical, if agonizing, way to work around the many corrosive issues that have been shivering like an early frost between them, steadily freezing their spirits and eating away at all the good things they have always shared. Sirius has made a concerted effort to be aware of all the things he now realizes he must not allow Remus to know; while simultaneously attempting to forget every single word Remus said to him three days ago. It is a bizarre, double-sided way to think, and Sirius has sometimes felt as if his mind has been tearing itself in two over the past days. The truth is, no matter how hard he tries, he _cannot_ forget. He cannot forget how love, always as easy and natural as breathing for him in the past, has suddenly become an incomprehensible maze, full of conflicting directions and riddled with false paths that lead only to impassable barriers. And he cannot forget the terrible promise Remus extracted from him in the end – the deadly curse he swore he would perform when the final extremity came round at last.

Thunderclouds are beginning to gather on baby Harry's brow once more and Sirius makes an enormous effort to put these awful thoughts aside as he tickles the baby to distract him and lifts him into the air. Harry laughs gleefully, and kicks his chubby legs out behind him.

James brings a tea tray into the room and sets it on the coffee table, then flops into a seat on the couch, watching as Sirius plays with his son. He pours a cup for himself and for Sirius.

"I knew you could get him to stop crying," he says gratefully. "You always do. Lily simply despises you for that, you know. Do you want the firewhiskey in your tea?" He points to a shot-glass filled with amber liquid on the tray.

Sirius does not answer right away; he is still assiduously _not_ thinking about Remus and the _Nihiliatus_ Curse while he raises the half-giggling Harry up and down in the air before him. After a few moments, he realizes that James is asking him a question.

"Hmmm?" he asks James. "What were you saying?"

"Firewhiskey. Tea. The blessed sound of Harry not crying for the first time in eight hours. Eh?"

"Oh, oh, yes. No, the firewhiskey's not for me. Hang on a tick."

Sirius settles Harry into the crook of his arm and reaches for the shot glass with his free hand. James looks on, slightly alarmed.

"Sirius Black! You are _not_ planning to give my innocent baby boy a shot of booze, surely?"

"Not exactly," Sirius answers, dipping his index finger into the shot glass. "This is a little house-elf trick Reggie's old nurse Trilby used when he was teething. He would cry something awful and I'd often to see her sneaking saucers of whiskey into the nursery for him." Sirius gently coaxes Harry's mouth open and rubs his moistened finger over Harry's sore gums, smoothing the firewhiskey onto the worst spots. Harry's face screws into a scowl of displeasure over the unfamiliar taste, but he doesn't cry, and he allows his godfather to dip another helping into his aching mouth in short order.

"Yes, poor baby, I know," Sirius says, gently coating the baby's gums again. "Tastes bloody awful, doesn't it? But it'll really help, you'll see."

After a moment, Harry says "Glillp-glay," and suddenly smiles broadly, showing all four of the tiny milk teeth he has already brought forth to excellent advantage.

"Merlin's beard!" James expostulates, amazed. "It works! You misbegotten wanker, Pads! Why on earth didn't you show us this trick sooner?"

Sirius chuckles. "I don't recall you ever meeting me at the front door with a screaming baby before, Prongs. And begging piteously for help, at that. Right pathetic of you, really."

"Hmmph. Have I ever mentioned to you that you look exactly like a turnip when you get that smug look on your face, mate? Does he need some more?"

Sirius surveys Harry critically while Harry examines his own fingers with interest. "Maybe not right away. If he gets too much all at once he'll just fall asleep, and then you can explain to Lily why her son has a hangover in the morning. We'll see if he starts crying again, after a while."

"I'll leave the dosage to you, then," James agrees, and hands Sirius his cup of tea. He glances around the room for a moment and sighs. "Our last night in this house. It's not …not quite the way I imagined it."

There are no visible signs of disarray around the pleasant, slightly messy room. No one would ever guess, just from looking, that the family that lives here will be going into deep hiding in Godric's Hollow the very next day.

"Is Lily explaining things to her mum, then, tonight?" Sirius asks James.

"I imagine she'll be trying, anyway. It's hard to make the whole mess clear to Muggles without frightening them too much. And you know her mum won't be too keen on the idea of her daughter and her grandson just dropping off the face of the earth for … however long it takes. How'd it go over with Remus?"

Sirius has been dreading this question for three days, though he has known that James would certainly be asking it. He jerks involuntarily a bit and Harry looks up at his face inquiringly.

"Vreep?" Harry asks.

"Sirius?" James asks, also gazing at Sirius inquiringly.

Sirius looks at both of them in turn, and suddenly smiles, as disturbed by their questioning as he is. They are already _so_ much alike, the two of them. It is the source of an odd kind of quiet and deep delight that helps to ease much of Sirius' inner distress, at least for a moment. Enough to answer their questions, anyway.

"It was … it _was_ a bit dodgy, talking to him, but we managed to sort it all out," he answers uninformatively. "Not something either of you two need worry about." Sirius does not think James needs to have his already pressing load of burdens made any heavier by Sirius' newly made discoveries about Remus. Nor does he need to know of the desperate end-game strategies Sirius is currently formulating in response to all that Remus has told him. James has all he can do trying to think how to keep his own immediate family safe.

"But he vetted the plan once you told him, didn't he?" James asks. "Analyzed it down to its atoms? That's what he's best at, seeing all the things you and I miss. What did he think?"

Sirius lets Harry pull himself up by grasping onto Sirius' hands for a moment while he tries to think of the wisest way to answer James' questions. He decides it is best to be as honest as possible under the circumstances.

"He thought the Charm could work as far as it goes, but the plan itself is deeply flawed," Sirius admits. "He believes the identity of the Secret Keeper is the weak spot in the strategy. That part, according to Remus, will be an open book to Voldemort and Company as soon as we cast the Charm."

Sirius sees the look of frightened dismay on James' face and wishes he had not even brought the subject up. James too, Sirius can see, has been thinking about what a horribly obvious choice for this role in the Charm Sirius really is.

"But he added a few little wrinkles to the plan to offset that weakness," Sirius adds hastily. He is already mentally scrambling for the right answers to any questions James may have about what Remus' "wrinkles" might have been.

"Does he think we should have let Dumbledore be Secret Keeper after all, then?" James asks anxiously. He is clearly ready to make this change at once, should Sirius ask it.

"Yes …and no. He does understand the reasons why we …decided not to go that route. But he-"

"You told him? About what Albus believes …er …about you?"

"Yes, I thought that was best. In any case, regardless of the… other things, Albus still wouldn't be the right person, by Remus' way of thinking. After me, he's the next most obvious choice for the Secret Keeper."

"What about Remus himself?"

"No, no, it's the same problem. Remus would be the third most likely choice. He's known to be a very close friend of yours and his abilities are quite well respected around and about. We'd need to take a different tack altogether if we were going to change Secret Keepers at this late date. Besides, I …I have a few new tricks up my sleeve, in case anything…should go wrong."

James frowns at Sirius, who is stubbornly not looking at him while he plays with Harry. The baby has apparently decided to turn his godfather into a one-man facsimile of the African jungle, and is currently crawling all over him on an impromptu safari.

"Don't muck about with pleasant little euphemisms tonight, Sirius," James says sharply. "We're talking straight here. We've got to. In case you're captured and tortured, you mean. "

"That won't happen, James" Sirius answers softly, and truthfully, up to a point. He does believe that the _Nihiliatus_ Remus has taught him will work just the way it is supposed to, and that if he is captured, he is quite unlikely to live long enough to be tortured at all.

But of course he can't test the curse out in advance to be certain it works, and that small area of uncertainty has been troubling him more and more over the past few days. It would certainly be the blackest of jokes on him - and on Remus too - if he tried mumbling "_Nihilium_" in some black hole of a Death Eater stronghold one fine day and just turned into a newt or sprouted horns or some other silly thing. If he is captured, the Curse ought to kill him and the secret right along with him as advertised, thus fixing Voldemort's little red wagon right properly. But Sirius would much prefer to be completely certain that he will be _unable_ to reveal anything, no matter what coercion he might have to face, should the Curse somehow fail. He does have a great deal of confidence in his own abilities, and this confidence is actually quite well warranted. But he is not so foolish as to expect to be _immune_ to torture simply because he hopes he will be. He does have some reasonable doubts. No one has ever tried to twist a secret out of him by force before, after all.

And he cannot afford _any_ doubt, not now, and not about this. He forces himself to look away from Harry and to meet James' eyes.

"I can almost guarantee you that won't happen, James. Remus and I …we've worked out a couple of things to try. Secret stuff - you know he does secret stuff for the Order. I'll tell you about it _after_, when we get the chance. None of it is really material to casting the Fidelius anyway." Sirius _hates_ being deliberately deceptive with James, but he doesn't see how it can be avoided.

And James' sharply searching gaze in response does very little indeed to ease Sirius' conscience _or_ his peace of mind. He might have known it would be damn near impossible to deceive James Potter in any way.

"You'll tell me about it 'after', Sirius? After _what_? After the earth's magnetic poles suddenly decide to reverse polarity? After all the ley lines in Scotland turn into bowling alleys with butterbeer on tap? After Voldemort crosses me and mine off of his Evil Over-lord 'to-do' list?"

"After we all retire and settle down to write our memoirs if you like then, Potter, you blithering idiot," Sirius snaps. "After we lose all our hair and have gout and start going to bed at six P.M. and develop an inordinate fondness for nightcaps with tassels! What would you like me to say? How should _I_ know how long all this is going to take? I'll explain it _after_! Let's move on!"

What Sirius really needs is some sort of back-up plan, and so far, he has been unable to think of one. He wishes he could plug into James' brain the way he once did when they were schoolboys together, dreaming up the most outlandish and unlikely pranks and projects and then, together, somehow making them really happen. But the question of how Sirius can most effectively keep James' secrets is not something James should _ever_ have to concern himself with.

Baby Harry, meanwhile, having heard the sharp edges in their tones of voice and sensing the disturbing emotional direction of the conversation - and being in a decidedly cranky frame of mind himself on this night - suddenly contributes a shrieking outburst of sobs to the discussion. Both James and Sirius are so startled by the sudden high-decibel howling that they almost jump, and every tense thought is instantly blasted right out of both their minds.

"Oh, dragon dung on ice!" James curses. "Not again! And he was being so good, too."

"Fire and brimstone!" Sirius also curses, and tries tickling the yowling toddler into submission once more.

Harry is having none of it, however, and doesn't shut up once until Sirius finally tries holding him upside-down in midair while James desperately sets off a marvelous display of multicolored musical bubbles from his wand. This combination of novel experiences does finally quiet the baby, who stares at the floating bubbles upside-downly and grasps at them with his small hands, giggling madly each time one of them bursts and peals forth a single perfect tone. After a few moments, Sirius is able to ease him back into a supine position in his lap and gives Harry's sore gums a new coating of firewhiskey.

"Drixxxit…fahghntn," Harry remarks a bit snappishly afterward, and sticks his thumb in his mouth.

"Fletnic eggt," Sirius answers him in a soothing whisper and unconsciously begins rocking his body a bit, so that the baby in his lap can be lulled by the movement. "Shelemon dep neft."

"Talks quite a lot for his age, doesn't he?" James comments softly and with visible pride.

Sirius looks up at his very best friend in the world and grins warmly at him.

"He's a regular human dictionary, Prongs. A prodigy. Just wait until he deigns to learn English."

Dealing with the sudden emergency of appeasing an irate infant has worked a peculiar small miracle on both the adult men's minds. Both are able to reappraise the issue of the Fidelius Charm, Voldemort, and the proposed identity of the Secret Keeper with completely cleared heads. They both speak at once, almost in unison.

"You know what we need to do, Sirius?" James says.

"I'll tell you what we really ought to do…" Sirius says at the exact same moment.

They both stop momentarily, gazing at one another, and then burst out laughing quietly together.

"We need to-" James begins.

"- make a last minute _switch_," Sirius finishes.

"Yes! Someone we haven't even thought of before, someone-"

"-someone _no one_ will ever think of. Not the _most_ likely choice or even the second or third, but-"

"- but the _least_ likely! And then we won't-"

"- we won't even breathe a word about it to anyone – not even-"

"- not even Dumbledore, and-"

"- and then we'll hide the _secret_ Secret Keeper somewhere safe, and-"

"- and then that gormless git Voldemort will put all his efforts into-"

"– into searching out the _wrong_ Secret Keeper! Good heavens, it's brilliant!" Sirius says excitedly. "It solves _everything_!"

He is so vastly relieved to have found his back-up plan at last that he doesn't even feel guilty about not mentioning to James precisely _which_ problems this last minute switch will solve. He can't stop grinning and feels as though a great and powerful searchlight has just switched on in his head. He begins calculating furiously.

"But _who_?" James vocalizes for him, putting words to Sirius' mental processes perfectly.

Sirius raises his hand and waves it at James in a tense hang-on gesture while he thinks _hard_, running through hundreds of names and personalities in the space of moments.

Eventually, the perfect choice comes to him.

"I've got it!" he says to James, and actually lets loose an amused cackle. It's so perfect – so completely and utterly absurd - that it's hilarious. It's _perfect_. He bends down and smacks a small kiss onto Harry's messy little head in his relief and his delight.

"Well, then?" James asks, also smiling. He can see how certain Sirius is, how happy he suddenly looks. "Who?"

"It's ideal," Sirius says. "No one will _ever_ figure it out, not in a thousand years of puzzling. Care to guess?"

"No, I bloody well _don't_ care to guess, you gigantic pain in the arse. Out with it! Who?"

Sirius looks up into James' eyes, almost drowning in his newfound assurance that James, his brother James, will really and truly be all right.

"It's perfect," he says to James once more. "Absolutely _perfect_."

"Who, who, _who_?" James repeats insistently.

Sirius grins at him one more time before he answers.

"_Peter._"


	17. Epilogue

_Epilogue_

July 27, 1993

It is a stormy, blustery afternoon, unseasonably cold for July, and there is an ominous towering bank of dark storm clouds out to sea, a great grey harbinger of yet another violent storm laying its plans to pound the Scots coast once again. Minister of Magic Cornelius Oswald Fudge shivers a bit in his warm cloak, shifts his briefcase and his folded newspaper importantly under his arm, and thinks about the dignity of his office.

He is thinking that it hardly befits the dignity and august authority of the Ministry of Magic itself that its chief executive should be scuttling like a frightened mouse through some dank stone corridor in Azkaban Fortress - hands shaking and heart in his throat and left boot soaked from a misadventure with a puddle outside – utterly demoralized by nothing more terrible than the simple sound of distant laughter.

On the other hand, Fudge points out to himself; it is not exactly the most cheery, jolly laughter he has ever heard. This laughter is a bit cracked and a bit creaky and a bit demented and more than a little bit spooky. It is abundantly clear that it is not FatherChristmas laughing his head off down there at the end of the hall.

But none of that is what has unnerved Fudge so badly that he is seriously considering faking a sudden attack of lumbago and scuttling right back out of the prison and off the island at once.

No. What really has his wind up is that he knows this laughter; it is familiar to him. He has heard _this_ voice, laughing in precisely _this_ way, once before.

Twelve years earlier, when he had been a junior minister with the Department of Magical Catastrophes, he had stood in a blasted street in Muggle London, strewn with Muggle dead and – so far as anyone could tell – the remaining bits of a brave, foolhardy wizard called Peter Pettigrew. And he'd seen a squad of Hit Wizards close in on the madman who had killed them all.

Sirius Black.

Black had been laughing on that day too. Laughing as though he'd never stop.

And, for all Cornelius Fudge knows, Black never _has_ stopped. It is twelve years later now, and Fudge has come up in the world and things are very different today from what they were then. But that _laughter_ – that hasn't changed very much at all. A bit more ragged, perhaps, a bit more hoarse, a bit more shot through with the chilling cadences of deepening despair, but still more or less the same, after all these years.

What in the name of God does Black have to laugh _about_? This may be the one question that disturbs Fudge most of all.

Just as he is making a firm decision that he really doesn't feel the need to find out, and is beginning to clutch at his lower back theatrically, he hears Black stop laughing for a moment and call something out.

"Oi, hang on," it sounds like. "Did I ever tell any of you about the time Reggie got a peanut stuck up his nose? It was _horrible_! You'll love it!"

Is the murderous loony actually talking to the _dementors_? Surely not. Fudge asks himself what in the world ever possessed him to make this inspection tour of the island prison himself, when he has six perfectly good lower-level assistants whom he _could_ have sent in his stead. Just as he rubs his back even more dramatically and starts to bend himself into an unlikely angle, a pair of dementors comes gliding toward him on either side and sway to a stop once they have him flanked.

No use faking illness with them. And not at all a good idea to let them get the impression that there is any fear hiding anywhere at all within the Minister of Magic, who is, at least theoretically, their boss.

Fudge rattles his paper a bit and puts a nervous hand to his tie and tugs at it. "What's all that, then?" he asks briskly, nodding in what he hopes is a suitably boss-like way toward the cell at the end of the corridor. "Isn't that Black down there? What's he on about?"

He has, of course, forgotten that dementors do not have eyes, and cannot see whether his body language is magisterial or not. And this nervous forgetfulness does send them a message that Fudge would hardly _choose_ to communicate, if he knew he was sending it.

But he doesn't know it, and then one of them answers his question, in any case.

_Sirius? He is laughing at us. He does that sometimes._

Fudge simply _hates_ it when the dementors talk to him. Their weird not-voices are almost unbearable. But the idea of a prisoner actually _laughing_ at the dreaded Azkaban guards - and after twelve years among them at that - is even more disturbing to him. Once again, the ghoulish and fanciful notion of a mad mass murderer laughing continuously for over a decade blossoms like a grotesque bud in his mind, and he tugs at his tie again to cover a small shudder.

_Shall we visit him, then? Perhaps he will have a few more…stimulating…things to say._

And now Fudge is even more chilled, and his wet boot feels like a block of ice that has his foot in a frozen vise grip. Because he can sense the cold gluttony in the dementors at his side as they speak of their prisoner, and he can sense the undertone of forlorn longing in them too.

_There are other times, many of them, when he will not talk to us at all. But surely he will speak to you, Minister._

Fudge has the cold, sudden realization that he's being used as some kind of bait. He's also aware he can't get out of this: his best – his only – course is to see Black and then get out of this hellhole.

"I felt really terrible about it afterward, you know," Black is saying clearly. "Because I told Regulus that if the peanut didn't come out, it would just work itself all the way up his nose into his brain and get stuck in there. And then he'd never be able to think of anything but peanuts for the rest of his life."

The dementors drift down the hall toward this voice that is speaking the most arrant nonsense almost, but not quite, randomly, the way some sentient bit of flotsam might drift in a tide. And they are herding Cornelius Fudge along with them; though now it seems to him almost as if they have forgotten that he is even there.

"There aren't many professions for wizards who can think only of peanuts," Black continues, "Not even government jobs. So of course Reggie was _very_ worried."

As they come toward the end of the corridor, Fudge can see that many more of them are gathered around outside the barred walls of the cell, so thick all around it that he cannot see past them to the prisoner within. All of them are swaying to and fro much like his own two escorts are doing – toward the bars and then away from them and then back once more. It is very like the movement of the tide.

Attraction and repulsion. They don't seem to really like what they are hearing, but in another way, they seem to want nothing more. Fudge wonders what it is that could tether these baleful creatures so fast to their places, like shivering waifs around a fire.

"The thing was," Black goes on, hoarse voice dropping into a clearly confidential register. "I was lying to him. I made the whole thing up."

Another outburst of creaky laughing follows this last dubious confession.

The man is mad, Fudge tells himself, and puffs himself up a bit as he passes through the throng of black-robed spectators to look at the man inside the cell.

Black is an unsettling sight. He's like some sinister scarecrow; all sharp bony angles and sunken eyes and masses of pitch black hair. There is no color anywhere on him, neither in the colorless, ragged robes he wears nor in his bone-white face. He is a monochromatic study in shades of black and white and grey. He might be a corpse - killed by a long season of neglect, perhaps, and then embalmed in magic as an object lesson in the dangers of the Dark Arts.

But what may be the most unsettling thing about the way he looks is that Fudge can still see the outlines of the striking young man he once watched laughing unstoppably as Aurors led him away through the field of carnage that he himself had created. A street full of shattered bodies and a young, darkly handsome wizard laughing amidst the wreckage. The too-prominent bones of the face are still pleasingly arranged. The gaunt body still retains a hint of its former grace. The skeletal hands are still beautifully formed. There is still something sensual and obscurely fascinating about the masses of matted hair.

Black is still weirdly beautiful, in the same disturbing way a specter or apparition might be. It seems a deeply perverse miscarriage of justice to Fudge that this should be so.

"Why, Cornelius Fudge," Black says, and comes to the perimeter of his narrow enclosure as though he were greeting an unexpected guest in his parlor. "How long has it been? You haven't changed a bit."

He's smiling pleasantly, but the planes of his face have become a bit too harsh to hold such an expression for long. And his eyes, glittering away down in their great dark hollows, are not friendly in the least.

Fudge is so horrified to learn that this wizard, whom he has not seen once in all these years and who was raving mad on the last day they met to boot, actually remembers him, that he cannot think what to say at all and squeaks out an inane "Good morning. Er…so you remember me then?

"Well, we did meet during a _particularly_ memorable occasion. Department of Magical Catastrophes, wasn't it? You were a …clerk…or something?"

"Junior minister," Fudge corrects a bit testily. Not only is Black still compelling looking, he is also apparently still a snotty pureblood berk who can make Fudge feel like an insignificant ass with a single phrase.

"Ah. Of course," he is saying now, and not making much of an effort to keep the tacit mockery out of his eyes or his voice, either. "Quite a lot of water under that bridge. My memory may be faulty in spots. It's just that you looked so incredibly petrified, last time I saw you, I imagined you must surely be new on the job."

This is too much. Fudge is not _the_ Minister of Magic for nothing, nor did he come to this great, filthy pile of rocks out here in the middle of the sea to be insulted by a walking, talking, human haunted house.

"I'm surprised you remember me at all," he snaps. "Seeing as how you were very busy at the time. Thirteen people with one curse. I'd have thought you might have been a bit fagged out."

Black reveals a set of teeth like a row of yellowing headstones as he chuckles unpleasantly.

"Oh…oh, well, yes…I suppose you're right. That must have been a job of work after all, now that you mention it. I suppose it _would_ have taken a lot out of…anyone. But, you know, I really do remember you – rabbity, timid expression and amusingly puffed-up attitude and all. I actually remember _everything _about that day – every smallest detail. I may not be all that clear on what year it is or how long I've been in here or what rubbish I had for breakfast today, but I certainly remember _you_, Cornelius Fudge. And you haven't changed all that much, at that."

"_You_ have," Fudge answers, a bit vindictively.

Black responds with another jack-o-lantern grin and waves one of his startlingly white hands toward his own face airily.

"Ah. The Azkaban Total Disaster Diet? Very effective, obviously, but I can't honestly recommend it. I keep telling _them_," he stops and waves his hand toward their audience of swaying, snuffling dementors. "To bring some quails eggs and hummingbirds' tongues, but they just won't listen to me. Not in regard to the menu, in any case."

"What on earth were you saying to them before?" Fudge asks before he can stop himself. "Some nonsense about peanuts and brains?"

Black glances around at the host of his jailers, all of them rattling faintly while they listen to, and perhaps consume, the emotional nuances of this conversation. Fudge suddenly realizes that it must be a very rare thing indeed for them to observe their charge engaged in interaction with a fellow human. The expression on Black's pared-down face is an odd mixture of horror and contempt as he looks at his ghastly caretakers.

"Oh, they have an _enormous_ …appetite…for stories," he explains, very softly. "But their sense of humor could do with some work. Every now and then, when I'm feeling up to it, I provide them with a few lessons."

He lowers his voice even more and winks at Fudge conspiratorially. It is one of the most horrible, malevolent expressions Fudge has ever seen on a human countenance.

"They just hate it when I tell them ridiculous anecdotes, you know. And they can barely _stand_ it when I laugh. But they can't… quite… bring themselves to stop listening, greedy things that they are."

He chuckles nastily again and looks once more past Fudge to the hideous gallery of spectators, ranged around outside the bars.

"Isn't that right, mates?" he calls to them. "Reggie tried to charm the peanut out of his nose, after I told him that story, did I mention that? He put his own training wand up his snoot and performed an _Expelliarmus_ on the spot. He dripped continuously for six days straight. Our parents were _livid_!"

All of the dementors _almost_ cringe backward in response to this postscript to the tale of Regulus Black and the inconvenient peanut. But at the same time, they all _almost_ yearn forward as well. Fudge watches this eerie internal tug-of-war playing out in their shifting postures and wonders why in the world Bartemious Crouch didn't just have Black executed when he had the chance. It appears that even the dreaded dementors of Azkaban are not quite safe in his general vicinity.

If he has them on the run after twelve years, what will he have done to them in another five or six or ten?

Black disrupts Fudge's unsettling train of thought with a question.

"What's that you have under your arm?" he is asking, pointing to the newspaper Fudge carries. "A copy of the _Prophet_?"

Fudge had quite forgotten the he even had a paper, and takes it out of the crook of his arm with one hand and stares at it a bit stupidly. He feels as though perhaps, somewhere between one end of the drafty stone hall behind him and the other, he may have taken a wrong turn into some waking, profoundly disturbing dream.

"Umm…yes…the _Daily Prophet_," he answers, a bit vaguely. Maybe _he's_ the one who needs to get himself out of Black's sphere of influence - and that right soon - he is thinking.

"Ah," Black says quietly, and with more intensity that he has yet shown at any earlier point in their dialogue. "May I …see the date?" he asks.

"The date?" Fudge replies, still a bit at odds and ends.

"The date, the date," Black barks impatiently. "Don't be so thick, Cornelius - honestly. What's the _date_?"

"Oh. Oh, I see. Er…" Fudge finds that although he was reading this paper over a breakfast of tea and porridge quite comfortably just a few hours earlier this morning, he now has no foggiest notion of just what today's date might be. He glances at the heading on the front page and reads it aloud.

"Mm …it's July twenty-seventh – er - nineteen ninety-three," he says.

Black sways a bit himself in response to this news, in unconscious imitation of the rows of dementors all around them, and his waxy, white face goes even more bloodless than it already is. Fudge would not have believed that would be possible, had he not seen it for himself.

"Nineteen…_ninety_…three?" Black breathes faintly. "Twelve _years_? Are you …are you quite sure?

As awful as the man's gruesomely supercilious former attitude has been, Fudge thinks, it was _far_ preferable to his current stark horror. He tries to imagine, for a moment, how _he_ might like to be imprisoned in hell so long that he would come, in time, to forget exactly how long it had been. It proves to be an utterly incomprehensible concept and Fudge sets the horrid train of thought aside abruptly.

"Well, here it is in the paper, after all, in black and white," he snaps, angry with himself and with Black too, for frightening him so much. "Read it for yourself!"

He holds the front page up toward the bars between the two of them abruptly.

But Black is not looking. He is raking a shaking hand through his great cowl of black, tangled hair and steadying himself by grasping at his bars with the other hand. His pale, gleaming eyes in their nests of shadows are blinking and he looks vaguely nauseated. But he is also clearly making an enormous effort to get back in control of himself.

"July …July…twenty…twenty-seventh…" he is stammering to himself. "That's …let's see now… that's very close to …" he continues to sift his damaged memory for a significant date as Fudge watches, both spooked and fascinated by the visible mental struggle.

"Close to …ah, I have it," Black murmurs, nodding his head jerkily. "I have it now. July thirty-first. A …a birthday."

It is clear that as he has seized on the carefully memorized date that has been eluding him, he has also found a way to damp down his own distress a bit too. Slowly, he is forcing himself to stop shaking.

"A birthday?" Fudge asks, still fascinated, in spite of himself.

Black, rather incredibly, laughs again. And this laughter, unlike anything Fudge has heard here before, is clear and whole and oddly infectious.

"He'll be thirteen, then…" he is saying to himself, smiling. And this one is a _beautiful_ smile too, one that recalls the lively, handsome young man Black once was vividly to Fudge's mind. It completely transforms his whole wasted face. "_Thirteen_. How perfectly marvelous…"

"_Who's_ thirteen?" Fudge asks a bit snappishly. He feels that, once again, this maniacal but still brilliant lunatic has taken a mental turn that he can neither understand nor follow.

Black laughs again. "A pudgy baby with sore gums and a vast, if eccentric, vocabulary," he answers, uninformatively. "A tiny boy with ridiculous hair. May I ask, have you finished reading that paper?"

"Have I ..?"

"The newspaper? Those sheets of paper you have in your hand with all the ink on them? The _Daily Prophet_? Have you finished reading it?"

"Oh. Oh, yes, I think…" Fudge has no idea whether he has finished reading the paper or not.

"May I have it? I …I rather miss doing the crossword puzzle."

The _crossword puzzle_?

The man is clearly as mad as a hatter. Certifiable. Fudge tries to tell himself what a great and good thing it is that this homicidal loony is currently behind bars rather than running about loose, but he can't quite shake the lingering impression that Sirius Black may not be quite as mad as all that. Certainly the peculiarly elegant inclination of his head as he waits for Fudge to answer looks perfectly sane and reasonable.

But it's absurd. Of _course_ he's mad, of course he is. How could he not be, after so many years in this terrible place?

And after all, why not humor him - what harm can it do? Why not?

Fudge refolds the newspaper and silently pushes the crackling pages through the bars. Black takes them in his bony white hands.

"Thank you," he says politely, gazing steadily at Fudge, this time with no hidden hint of mockery in his eyes. "It's very kind of you. I appreciate it."

And _I'll_ appreciate the chance to get the hell _out_ of here, Fudge thinks vehemently. This has not been a satisfactory tour of inspection at _all_.

Cornelius Oswald Fudge, Minister of Magic, somehow manages to find it in himself to get a bit puffed up again as he makes his somewhat hasty farewells. As he leaves Black's cell and hurriedly retraces his steps down the corridor that he came up, he is satisfied that he has upheld the dignity of his office successfully in the odd interview just past, despite a few admittedly patchy spots. After all, _he_ is leaving, while Sirius Black is obliged to remain.

Just before he gets aboard the boat that will take him back to the mainland (both Apparating and traveling by Floo are impossible to or from Azkaban; the presence of the dementors disrupts the flow of the magics too much), he instructs the inhuman prison employees in his purview to triple their guard on their most high-security prisoner. The man, clearly, is still very dangerous indeed.

As Fudge is just sailing off the stony shores of the island and heading out to the open sea, Sirius is just unfolding the newspaper Fudge gave him and beginning to read.

His attention wanders past a photograph he finds near the front page, and then snaps back to it, wholly riveted. It's an all red-headed family on holiday in Egypt, and there is a tall boy among them - a boy, Sirius thinks, that he may once have _seen_ on some Halloween night in the past - on one of those nights when he has tried to cast his sight out beyond his physical boundaries.

The boy in the picture has a … pet on his shoulder, Sirius sees. A shockingly familiar pet.

A _rat_…

The End


End file.
